Maritime Blockade of Germany in the Great War:

Includes regular reports of the admirals in command of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet.Blockade was part of the strategy which brought about the defeat of Germany and its allies in the Great War, although how great a part remains a subject for debate. What is clear is that responsibility for enforcing that blockade rested firmly with the Royal Navy and, in particular, with the Tenth Cruiser Squadron. Operating within a gradually changing network of rules and practices, it grew from eight to over forty vessels, the most important of them armed merchant cruisers, which asserted an increasingly firm control over all maritime traffic sailing the waters north of the British Isles. For three and a half years the Northern Patrol was the most continuously active naval force of any participant in the Great War. The main sequence of documents in this collection is the Reports of Proceedings by Admirals de Chair and Tupper, successively commanders of the squadron. These form an almost continuous account from the start of the war to the dismantling of the Northern Patrol at the end of 1917, when a combination of the entry of the United States and the by then almost universal adoption of Navicerts or 'Letters of Assurance' covering virtually every element of the cargoes carried by neutral ships rendered it redundant. Attached to this sequence are a variety of other documents including Admiralty letters, minutes, memoranda and telegrams and those from the Commander-in-Chief and commanders in Orkney and Shetland. Below that level, Reports of Proceedings by ships' captains illustrate at a stage closer to events the work being done, while closer still are reports written by boarding officers and officers in charge of armed guards put on board intercepted ships to take them into British ports. These junior officers, usually from the RNR or RNVR, often had to operate in very unpleasant and difficult circumstances and were key to ensuring that the stopping, searching and detention of neutral vessels did not lead to diplomatic incidents of the kind which a hundred years earlier had contributed to the outbreak of the War of 1812. In addition, extracts from the diaries of a variety of officers illustrate the regular routine of the patrol, often in the most challenging of conditions found in the North Atlantic. From the lower deck, only one document appears to have survived, the diary of an Able Seaman describing coping with the tedium of a life in which intercepting a ship was an event and a run ashore on Shetland a highlight. Finally are reports from Customs officers to the Contraband Committee in London on intercepted ships sent into Kirkwall, Lerwick or Stornoway for examination. From these it has been possible to follow up individual ships and hence determine the extent of justification for the regular complaints of the men of the Patrol that they were working hard in dangerous conditions to locate and intercept ships, only for them to be released by higher authority.