Table Of ContentRESEARCH 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)
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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.
