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Fishermen, the Fishing Industry and the Great War at Sea: A Forgotten History? PDF

216 Pages·2020·2.576 MB·English
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RESEARCH IN MARITIME HISTORY NO. 54 FISHERMEN, THE FISHING INDUSTRY AND THE GREAT WAR AT SEA A FORGOTTEN HISTORY? RObb RObINSON SERIES EDITOR Professor Hugh MURPHY (University of Glasgow) EDITORIAL bOARD Professor Andrew D. LAMBERT (King’s College, London) Professor Jari OJALA (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) Professor Raymond STOKES (Centre for Business History, University of Glasgow) Professor Stig TENOLD (Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen) INTERNATIONAL MARITIME HISTORY ASSOCIATION President: Malcolm TULL (Murdoch University, Australia) Vice President: Amélia POLÓNIA (University of Porto, Portugal) Vice President: Constantin ARDELEANU (University of Galati, Romania) Treasurer: Maria FUSARO (University of Exeter, England) Secretary: Ingo HEIDBRINK (Old Dominion University, USA) MAILING ADDRESS Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU United Kingdom Recently Published books in the Series 46: Lewis R. Fischer and Even Lange (eds), New Directions in Norwegian Maritime History 47: John Armstrong and David M. Williams, The Impact of Technological Change: The Early Steamship in Britain 48: Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 49: Gordon Boyce, The Growth and Dissolution of a Large-Scale Business Enterprise: The Furness Interest 1892–1919 50: Torsten Feys, The Battle for the Migrants: The Introduction of Steamshipping on the North Atlantic and Its Impact on the European Exodus 51: Anthony Slaven and Hugh Murphy (eds), Crossing the Bar: An Oral History of the British Shipbuilding, Ship Repairing and Marine Engine-Building Industries in the Age of Decline, 1956–1990 52: Olaf U. Janzen, War and Trade in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland 53: Christopher W. Miller, Planning and Profits: British Naval Armaments Manufacture and the Military-Industrial Complex, 1918–1941 RESEARCH IN MARITIME HISTORY NO. 54 Fishermen, the Fishing Industry and the Great War at Sea A Forgotten History? RObb RObINSON The Great War at Sea First published 2019 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2019 Robb Robinson The right of Robb Robinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-78694-175-6 epdf ISBN 978-1-78694-991-2 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Contents Contents List of Tables vi List of Photographs vii List of Figures viii Introduction 1 1 Fish and Naval Forces: The Edwardian Background 5 2 1914: The Early Months of the War 23 3 The Trawler Reserve and Minesweeping: January 1915–December 1917 44 4 Offensive Actions 65 5 Fighting Overseas 97 6 Fishing during the Great War 116 7 1918: Minesweeping and Anti-Submarine Operations during the Final Year 140 8 The Aftermath 163 Epilogue: Contribution and Cost 177 Select Bibliography 184 Acknowledgements 189 Index 191 Tables Tables 1 Minesweeping forces, April 1915 45 2 Minesweeper capability, 1917–1918 64 3 Disposition of minesweeping forces, November 1918 (home waters) 182 vi Photographs Photographs 1 Trawler crew on Admiralty service 26 2 Drifter crew on Admiralty service 37 3 Scottish fishermen held in German prison camp 48 4 George Frances Robinson in Auxiliary Patrol mate’s uniform 53 5 Magnus Flaws from Shetland with companions 56 6 HMT Ferriby on Admiralty service 71 7 War-time Auxiliary Patrol crew of the Buckie drifter Obtain 102 8 Scarborough trawlermen held on the deck of a U-boat 125 9 Armed trawler in Italy, 1918 154 10 Armed trawler crew in Italy, 1918 154 11 Armed trawler Lord Roberts, c.1915 161 vii Figures Figures 1 An otter trawl 7 2 North Sea fishing grounds 8 3 1914–1918 minesweeping operation 28 4 East coast swept channels 30 5 Outline map of the Straits of Dover 68 6 Auxiliary Patrol drifter and anti-submarine nets, c.1918 77 7 Outline map of the Dardanelles 98 8 Outline map of the Straits of Otranto 105 9 Outline map of the White Sea approaches 113 10 Fishing vessels lost to enemy action while fishing during the Great War, August 1914–November 1918 138 11 Losses of fishing vessels on Admiralty service, August 1914– November 1918 180 12 Locations of fishing vessels destroyed by enemy action, 1914–1918 181 viii Introduction Introduction On 21 October 1904, on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, warships from the Baltic fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy, under the command of Admiral Rozhestvensky, entered the North Sea. They were on a war footing, and later, in the evening of the same day, the Russians bore down on the trawlers of Hull’s Gamecock fishing fleet. Powerful searchlights illuminated the seas and the warships opened fire. For 20 minutes, the unarmed fishing vessels were subjected to an unrelenting bombardment.1 The steam trawler Crane received the heaviest hits: skipper George Smith and mate John Leggott were decapitated by the shells which smashed into their vessel. The Crane eventually sank, and the rest of the crew were rescued by the trawler Gull, but two other fishing vessels, Mouleim and Mino, which were also subject to heavy fire, were badly damaged yet stayed afloat. The order to cease fire came just a few minutes before 1 a.m. and the Russian warships hurried off into the night towards the English Channel without pausing to inspect the carnage they had created. Meanwhile, the stunned crews of the Gamecock trawler fleet gave up fishing, stowed away their gear, and steamed off in great haste, heading for the Humber and their home port of Hull.2 The Dogger Bank incident, or ‘Russian Outrage’, as it became known, was a tragic mistake. Russia was not at war with Britain but with Japan. Russia’s Baltic fleet, consisting of 42 warships of varying age and size, was on the first leg of what was to be an 18,000 mile voyage to the Far East, the intention being to reinforce the navy vessels already there that had endured a series of serious setbacks in their nation’s vicious conflict with Japan. To that date the Japanese had surprised and outwitted the Russians in many actions and Rozhestvensky and his command – expecting attack at almost any time on their voyage, despite the great distances involved – had mistaken these civilian trawlers for Japanese torpedo boats.3 The repercussions of the attack were immediate and global, the British media were incensed; there was talk of declaring war on Russia and of the 1 Robb Robinson, Trawling: The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery (Exeter, 1886), 125–126. 2 Eastern Morning News, 23 October 1904. 3 Robinson, Trawling, 125. 1 2 The Great War at Sea Royal Navy attacking this fleet, but in the event Rozhestvensky and his ironclad armada were left to continue their convoluted cruise to the Far East. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these Russian warships were subsequently destroyed when attacked by Admiral Togo and the Imperial Japanese Navy as they attempted to pass through the Straits of Tsu-Shima during the following May.4 One of the few Russian vessels that survived the battle was the cruiser Aurora, which, many years later, in October 1917, fired the round that marked the opening of the Bolshevik Revolution and is now a museum ship moored in St Petersburg. Back in Britain, trawling interests were later awarded £65,000 in compensation5 and afterwards a number of new trawlers entering the Hull fleet were given names with a Japanese theme.6 Three trawlermen lost their lives as a result of this unprovoked attack and in 1906 a statue was raised on Hull’s Hessle Road to mark the event and remember those who were killed. A century after the incident, in 2004, the statue was renovated, and the Russian Naval Attaché attended the rededication ceremony, proffering his country’s apologies.7 Although the now seemingly distant Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 had this dramatic, immediate, and profoundly direct impact on Hull fishermen, the nature and course of the wider conflict, and the lessons learned from it by naval strategists, have been judged as much more significant, with many more long-term implications for the British fish trade and for the fishermen who manned these vessels. This war has subsequently been described as the first modern war. What can more certainly be said is that it was the first twentieth- century conflict in which both sides deployed a great deal of what was then modern naval weaponry – products of the new military-industrial order. Armour- plated warships with large guns engaged each other at what had hitherto been considered great distances. Torpedoes were used in substantial numbers and, above all, both sides made extensive use of mines. Although mines were then relatively unsophisticated, they were cheap, and used to great effect in this conflict, sinking many warships. Indeed, the threat they posed to warships and merchant vessels alike was evident to all. Although both the Russians and Japanese had deployed them in great numbers, neither side had found a means of effectively neutralising their threat. In the years following this war, international attempts were made to prohibit their use. As these proved unsuccessful, efforts to find to the best ways of countering their threat were redoubled. The need to find a way of dealing with the deadly menace posed by 4 M. Stille, The Imperial Japanese Navy of the Russo-Japanese War (Oxford, 2016), 14–15. 5 Rotem Kowner, Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War, 2nd edn (London, 2017), 137. 6 See, for example, Alec Gill, Lost Trawlers of Hull: Nine Hundred Losses between 1835 and 1987 (Beverley, 1987), 74 and 89–90. 7 The author attended the rededication ceremony.

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