History of the North Sea

The history of the North Sea reveals it to be the major route for conquests between the adjoining countries. The North Sea has consistently played this role since written records began, and extending until World Wars I and II. Today, it is more important as a fishery and source of fossil fuel and renewable energy, since territorial expansion of the adjoining countries has ceased. However, some of the North Sea's ports still harbour military vessels.

The way to the British Isles

:"Main articles: Roman Britain and Viking Age"The first historically confirmed intensive use of the North Sea was by the Romans in 12 BC, when Nero Claudius Drusus built and launched a fleet of over a thousand ships into the North Sea conquering the indigenous tribes, including the Frisians and the Chauci. By 5 BC the Roman knowledge of the Sea was greatly expanded as far as the Elbe by a military expedition under Tiberius. Pliny the Elder describes Roman sailors going through Helgoland and as far as the northeast coast of Denmark. [Citation
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Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain in 55 BC and 54 BC were intended to punish those tribes who had supported the rebels in Gaul [Citation
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and with the later conquest of Britain by Aulus Plautius in 43 AD, regular trade began between Rome and Britain via ports in Gaul. Using Roman naval support along the North Sea coast of Scotland, Agricola continued the invasion and exploration northward into the Scottish Highlands. This traffic continued to some extent even after Emperor Honarius abandoned responsibility for defending Britain in 410 AD.

In the power vacuum left by Rome, the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes began the next great migration across the North Sea. Having already been used as mercenaries in Britain by the Romans, many people from these tribes migrated across the North Sea during the Migration Period, conquering and perhaps displacing the native Celtic populations. [Citation
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Around the seventh century a wave of Frisian migrants moved to several islands in the North Sea, and a second wave moved to what is now Nordfriesland in northern Germany and South Jutland in southern Denmark in the 11th century.

The attack on Lindisfarne in 793 is generally considered the beginning of the Viking Age. For the next 250 years the Scandinavian raiders of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark dominated the North Sea, raiding monasteries, homes, and towns along the coast and along the rivers that ran inland. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle they began to settle in Britain in 851. They continued to settle in the British Isles and the continent until around 1050. [Citation
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Alfred the Great, who is counted as the first English king, was the first to mount significant opposition to the Vikings eventually relegating them to the Danelaw and carving out his own kingdom. Harthacanute of Denmark and England was the last Viking king to rule over a territory spanning the North Sea as after his death the kingdom broke apart. [Citation
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With the rise of William the Conqueror the North Sea began to lose its significance as an invasion route. The new order oriented most of England and Scandinavia's trade south, toward the Mediterranean and the Orient. The Baltic Sea became increasingly important for northern Germany and Scandinavia as well as the powerful Hanseatic League began to rise.

Hanseatic League

Though the Hanseatic League was centered in the Baltic, it also had important Kontors on the North Sea, including Bergen, the Steelyard in London, and Bruges. [Citation
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The rise of Bruges as a center of trade and a corresponding revival of the North Sea economic importance began in 1134 when a storm tide created a deeper waterway to the city allowing the entry of large ships to port. A lively trade sprang up between Bruges and London, mostly in textiles. Bruges became the end point of the Hanseatic East-West trade line that began in Novgorod and was very important for maritime connections between France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands and the Hanseatic regions of Northern Europe.

in 1441 the Hanseatic League was forced to recognize the equality of the Netherlands as Antwerp had risen as an economic power and tied itself to Denmark. After the so-called Count's Feud, a war of succession in Denmark, the Dutch were able to encroach upon the League's monopoly on Baltic trade and the reign of the Hanseatic League was at an end as the Netherlands became the center of the Northern European economy.

The Netherlands as a world economic power

:"Main article Dutch Golden Age"

In the 16th century, the Netherlands became the preeminent economic power in the world. For the Dutch merchant marine the North Sea served more as a starting point for their oceanic voyages. It had become the gateway and crucial outlet allowing Dutch merchants direct access to world markets. [Citation
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During the Eighty Years War, the Dutch began a heavily invested worldwide trade - hunting whales around Svalbard, trading spices from India and Indonesia, founding colonies in Brazil, South Africa, North America (New Netherlands), and the Caribbean. The empire, which they accumulated through trade, led to the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century.

In 1651 England passed the Navigation Acts, which damaged Dutch trade interests. The disagreements concerning the Acts led to the First Anglo–Dutch War, which lasted from 1652-1654 and ended in the Treaty of Westminster (1654), whereby the Dutch were forced to recognize the acts. In 1665 the English declared war on the Dutch once again, beginning the Second Anglo-Dutch War. With the support of the French, who, between the war, had marched into the Spanish Netherlands--present day Belgium, the Dutch gained the upper hand. In 1667, following Admiral de Ruyter's destruction of a large part of the British fleet on the [http://www.deruyter.org/CHATHAM_Dutch_in_the_Medway.html Medway] ,the English and the Dutch signed the Treaty of Breda The peace dictated that the English would take over administration of Dutch possessions in North America (present day New York City) while the Dutch would get Suriname from the English and were able to amend the Navigation Acts.

1672 is known in the Netherlands as "Rampjaar," the year of disaster. England declared war on the Netherlands once again, beginning the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and were quickly followed by France, the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, and the Archbishopric of Cologne in an alliance against the Dutch. The three continental allies marched into the Netherlands while the landing of English troops along the coast was only barely prevented. [Citation
last =David Ormrod, University of Kent
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Britain: the naval superpower

England's climb to the pre-eminent sea power of the world began in 1588 as the attempted invasion of the Spanish Armada was defeated by the combination of outstanding naval tactics by the English under command of Sir Francis Drake and the breaking of the bad weather. The strengthened English Navy waged several wars with their neighbors across the North Sea and by the end of the 17th century had erased the Dutch's previously world-spanning empire. [Citation
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The building of the British Empire as a domain on which the sun never set was possible only because the British navy exercised unquestioned control over the seas around Europe, especially the North Sea. The only significant challenge to British domination of the seas came during the Napoleonic wars. The Battle of Copenhagen took place in the Kattegat and ended the League of Armed Neutrality, a union of lesser naval powers including Denmark-Norway, Russia, and Prussia, which had united to protect neutral shipping against the British. The Battle of Trafalgar took place off the coast of Spain against a combined French and Spanish fleet and was won by Admiral Horatio Nelson, ending Napoleon's plans to invade Britain and securing British dominance of the seas for more than another century.

The First World War

"Main articles: World War I and Naval Warfare of World War I"During the First World War, Great Britain's Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow and Germany's Kaiserliche Marine faced each other across the North Sea.

Due to its numerical advantage in dreadnoughts, the Grand Fleet obtained Naval superiority and was able to establish a sea blockade of Germany's coast. The goal of the blockade was to deny Germany access to maritime trade including war materials and to guarantee the undisturbed ferrying of British troops. Because of the strong defensive fortress of Heligoland, the Germans controlled the German Bight, while the rest of the North Sea and the English Channel were controlled by the Royal Navy for the duration of the war.

August 6, 1914 First Battle of the Atlantic - Two days after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.

The first sea battle, the Battle of Heligoland Bight took place on 28 August, 1914 and ended in a clear British victory. Because of British surface naval superiority , the Germans initiated submarine warfare. After several failures, the German submarine Unterseeboot 9 succeeded in sinking 3 British armored cruisers about 50 km north of Hoek van Holland, near the North Sea entrance to the English Channel. [Citation
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This ended British complacency about submarines.In November 1914, the British declared the entire North Sea a war zone and from there on out it was mined. Ships that sailed the North Sea under the flags of neutral countries without giving the British prior warning could be the target of British attack.

In the Battle of Dogger Bank (1915), the Germans suffered another defeat on the 24 January 1915 and in the aftermath, all attempts to break the allied blockade failed. Due to these failures, on 4 February, 1915, the Germans initiated unrestricted submarine warfare, in which, in addition to enemy ships, all neutral ships could be attacked.

On May 31 and June 1, 1916, the Battle of Jutland, if measured by the number of participating ships (238), the largest naval battle in world history took place. The German goal of significantly weakening the British Navy by sinking a large part of it and ending the blockade was not achieved. Although the Germans won a tactical victory, their main fleet narrowly escaped destruction and they once again laid their hopes on the unrestricted submarine warfare. [Citation
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As the war was ending and contrary to the wishes of the new German regime, a final attack on the British Navy on October 28, 1918 was ordered. However, the outbreak of the Wilhelmshaven mutiny in Kiel ended the naval war. The mutiny was also a crucial step in the initiation of the November Revolution.

The Second World War

The Second World War was, in terms of naval warfare, again mostly a submarine war on the German side. However, this time the main action was not in the North Sea but rather the Atlantic. Also different from the first war, the North Sea was no longer the exclusive territory of the Allies. Rather, it was, above all in the first years of the war, the stage for an intensive coastal war, featuring mainly small vessels like submarines, minesweepers, and Fast Attack Craft. [Citation
last = Campaigns of World War 2
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accessdate = 2007-07-24] However, despite early successes, which brought about a supply crisis in Britain, the Germans did not succeed in breaking the British resistance. Like in the first war, the allies soon controlled the seas, especially due to air superiority and cut Germany off from supplies coming overseas.

On October 14, 1939, Korvettenkapitän Günther Prien of submarine "U-47" managed to sink the warship HMS "Royal Oak" in the Scapa Flow with 1400 men aboard.

On April 9, 1940 the Germans initiated Operation Weserübung in which almost the entire German fleet was focused north toward Scandinavia. The military objectives of the operation were soon achieved (occupation of Norwegian ports, securing of iron supply, and the prevention of a northern front) and Norway and Denmark. [Citation
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accessdate = 2007-07-24] The occupation lasted for the duration of the war as did the secret Shetland Bus operation which ran secretly across the North Sea from Great Britain to Norway first by Norwegian fishing boats and then by three convert|100|ft|m|-1|abbr=on submarine chasers transferred from US to Norwegian command (see also: HNoMS "Hitra"). [ [http://www.shetland-heritage.co.uk/shetlandbus/pages/the_operation.htm The Operation ] ]

Because of the inferiority of the large battleships, especially after early losses (1939 "Admiral Graf Spee", 1940 "Blücher", and 1941 "Bismarck"), the German Kriegsmarine resorted more and more to small units with the remaining large ships almost dormant in the Norwegian fjords.

In the last years of the war and the first years thereafter under allied control, an abundance of weapons were dumped into the sea. While chemical weapons were mostly dumped in the Skagerrak and the Baltic, conventional weapons (grenades, mines, bazookas, and cartridges) were sunk in the German Bight. The estimates vary widely but it seems to be clear that more than a hundred thousand tons of munitions were sunk.

The Maunsell Sea Forts were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. One on which on HM Fort Roughs is now occupied by the controversial Principality of Sealand. [Citation
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After the war

In the time after the Second World War, the use of the North Sea toward peaceful ends came to the foreground, because, while Cold War adversaries faced off in the Baltic, the North Sea was bordered only by NATO member-states.

The North Sea gained significant economic meaning in the 1960s as the states on the North Sea began to exploit the oil and gas resources. The largest environmental catastrophe in the North Sea was the destruction of the offshore oil platform Piper Alpha in 1988 in which 167 people lost their lives.

Political status

Although de facto control of the North Sea played a decisive role in the political power relationships in north-west Europe since the time of the Vikings, and became a question of world politics after the First Anglo-Dutch War, until after the Second World War the bordering countries officially claimed no more than narrow coastal waters. In the last few decades things have changed.

The countries bordering the North Sea all claim the twelve nautical miles (22 km) of territorial waters within which they have, for example, exclusive fishing rights. Iceland, however, as a result of the Cod Wars has exclusive fishing rights for 200 miles from its coast, into parts of the North Sea. The Common Fisheries Policy of the EU exists to coordinate fishing rights and assist with disputes between EU states and the EU border state of Norway.

After the discovery of mineral resources in the North Sea, Norway claimed its rights under the Continental Shelf Convention and the other countries on the sea followed suit. These rights are largely divided along the median line, defined as the line "every point of which is equidistant from the nearest points of the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea of each State is measured." [Citation
last =The Multilaterals Project, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
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title = Convention on the Continental Shelf, Geneva.
date =29 April 1958
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url =http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/texts/BH366.txt
accessdate = 2007-07-24] Only for the border between Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark was the ocean floor otherwise divided after protracted negotiations and a judgment of the International Court of Justice [Citation
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In relation to environmental protection and marine pollution the MARPOL 73/78 Accords created convert|25|mi|km|0|sing=on and convert|50|mi|km|0|sing=on zones of protection. Furthermore, the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic concerns itself directly with the question of the preservation of the ocean in the region. Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands have a trilateral agreement for the protection of the Wadden Sea, or mudflats, which run along the coasts of the three countries on the southern edge of the North Sea.

The European Maritime Safety Agency has monitored and coordinated all sea traffic through the sea since its inception in 2003. While the Agency is part of the EU, non-member states Norway and Iceland have seats in the agency as they are directly affected.

References