Extension of British shipping licences

On 15 February 1916 the British government issued an Order in Council that greatly extended the powers of the Ship Licensing Committee. From then on no British steamer of more than 500 tons gross registered in the United Kingdom could set out on any voyage other than in the coasting trade without a licence from the committee. When licences were introduced in November 1915, they applied only to the carriage of cargo between foreign ports. Now they covered all ocean voyages, both with cargo and in ballast, that is, without cargo. The change was recommended jointly by the Board of Trade and the Shipping Control Committee set up in January. On the same day a royal proclamation prohibited the import without licence of paper, tobacco, furniture woods and stone.

What was left of the tonnage

The committee’s first months of work showed that little more could be squeezed out of the ships trading between foreign ports. The committee met daily and prided itself that no ship had waited more than a day for its decision unless the application was incomplete. In a report of 4 January 1916 it stated that it had licensed 1,355 steamers, 698 of which were liners running to and from Britain that carried cargo between foreign ports only incidentally. The number of British steamers of 1,600 tons and over engaged solely in trade between foreign countries had been reduced to 613, far fewer than half the pre-war figure. Most of them, however, could not be taken away. Some were serving the Allies, some carried nitrate from Chile to munitions factories, and more than half of the liners plying between neutral ports belonged to two large lines serving the coastal trade on the China seas and were unsuitable for ocean voyages. That left about 300 tramps available, while the Allies’ new demands alone required, by the committee’s estimate, more than 370 ships. Meanwhile the government was requisitioning about a hundred ships a month, so licensing could only slow the shrinking of the merchant fleet, not produce a surplus.

A new instrument

The Board of Trade immediately restricted the use of the new powers. Under instructions sent to the committee, voyages with cargo to or from Britain were to be licensed without difficulty, and licences for voyages to British possessions or Allied countries were not to be refused without a specific reason, such as congestion at the port of destination. Voyages in ballast were to be restricted as far as possible. The committee was not, however, to refuse licences on account of the kind of cargo unless the Board of Trade expressly so directed.

Despite these reservations the committee quickly put its new powers to use in two matters. The first was empty return voyages. The Italians, who chartered British ships to carry coal, wanted to send them back in ballast so that they could make as many runs as possible, and every such voyage wasted carrying capacity. The committee could now require a ship returning from Italy to call at a port in Spain for iron ore for Britain, and colliers to France picked up pit props from the south of France or ore from Spain on the way back. The second matter was congested ports. As early as December 1915 the committee had refused licences for voyages to Genoa for about a month, which allowed the goods piled up there to be cleared. Now this principle was extended to all voyages from Britain to French and Italian ports. The committee gathered regular reports on the situation in the ports and refused licences where ships were waiting a long time to unload. In this it worked closely with the committee controlling coal exports, so that France and Italy did not receive more cargo than their ports could handle. The French often protested against the refusals.

The maritime trade historian Ernest Fayle observed that although the committee’s full powers were for the time being held in reserve, the right to refuse a licence for any voyage was an effective instrument of control over the part of the fleet that the state had not requisitioned. The government used this instrument throughout 1916, until 1917, when requisitioning covered almost all British merchant ships.