Demand for the surrender of Dutch ships

On 4 January 1918 the British government put concrete proposals for an agreement on tonnage to the Dutch delegates in London. The British chronology of the war calls them a demand that the Dutch ships lying in Allied ports be handed over to the Allies. In reality it was a matter of charter: the Netherlands was to hand over to the British and American governments for a fixed period ships with a total deadweight of 600,000 tons, and to employ the rest of its merchant fleet so that it served Allied interests as well. In return it could count on permission to import grain, fodder, fertilisers and coal, which it lacked more and more.

An idle fleet

The Netherlands had one of the largest merchant fleets among the neutral states. From the beginning of 1917, however, when Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare, its ships had almost disappeared from Allied service. Some lay in port, because their owners feared the U-boats or did not want to accept Allied charters. Others were held by the United States, which on entering the war had stopped exports to neutral countries bordering Germany. According to the British official history, because of the American embargo almost 400,000 tons of Dutch shipping lay idle in Dutch and American ports. Meanwhile the Allies, after the losses inflicted by the U-boats, were in desperate need of tonnage, as shown in the autumn by the agreement on the matter between Britain, France and Italy.

The Dutch too were in a difficult position. In 1917 only about 40 per cent of their normal imports of fodder reached them, and by the end of the year none was arriving at all. All sources of fertilisers were closed, and deliveries of British coal had fallen from over two million tons a year before the war to 380,000 tons. In November 1917 the Netherlands opened negotiations with the Allied powers. In London they were conducted on the British side by Leverton Harris, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Blockade, and the Americans and French also took part.

Ships outside the war zone

The British proposals of 4 January took into account the particular position of the Netherlands, which bordered Germany and feared being drawn into the war. No Dutch ship, even one chartered by the Allies, was to be sent into the war zone without the owner’s consent. The Allies intended to use the Dutch ships on routes outside it and so free their own and Norwegian ships for voyages through dangerous waters. At the same time talks were going on about a temporary arrangement for the ships lying in American ports. Washington took a harder line towards the Dutch than London. On 5 January the American State Department confidentially informed the British that if the Netherlands rejected reasonable proposals, the United States would requisition the Dutch ships in its ports.

On 25 January the Dutch minister in Washington confirmed a temporary arrangement: the ships in American ports were each to make one voyage for the United States, lasting at most 90 days, outside Europe, some of them also in the service of relief for occupied Belgium. The arrangement was not carried out, because Germany threatened to sink without warning any Dutch ship sailing to America. The government in The Hague gave no clear answer to the proposals of 4 January. In March the Allies put new, harsher terms to the Dutch, with no restrictions on the use of the ships. The Dutch, under pressure from German threats, accepted them only with the reservation that the ships would not carry war materials. Then, on 21 March 1918, Britain and the United States, invoking the right of angary, which allows a belligerent state to seize foreign property on its territory, requisitioned the Dutch ships in their ports, in all about 680,000 tons deadweight.