News that four Royal Navy patrol ships will be ready from 1 January to help protect UK fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit has evoked memories of the “cod wars” – a battle over fishing grounds off Iceland that lasted almost 20 years until it was resolved in the mid-1970s. The first cod war, a phrase coined by Fleet Street, began in September 1958, when Iceland, concerned about overfishing and its impact on a cornerstone of its economy, extended its fishing limit from four to 12 nautical miles from its coast. Britain refused to recognise the unilateral declaration and deployed three frigates and an ocean minesweeper to protect British trawlers. They were ranged against the Icelandic coastguard, consisting in total of eight small patrol vessels, the largest being the 693-tonne Thor. On 1 September 1958, the then-Manchester Guardian reported: “According to Icelandic sources, they intend to fire into the bridge of any trawler inside the twelve-mile limit which fails to stop after a shot across the bows.”
Nine days later, the paper carried an account by skipper Jim Crockwell, of how a party from Thor had boarded his trawler, the Northern Foam. “We were fishing in the protected area known as Spearmint II,” he said. “And we were in dense fog. Visibility was nil. I could see there were two ships approaching on the radar screen, and I supposed that they were other ships fishing in the area. They were going about the same speed as we were, but in the opposite direction. Suddenly Thor appeared out of the fog on our port side and Maria-Julia came up on our starboard side. The Thor positioned herself on our port bow.” Crockwell said the officer in charge of the boarding party advised him to go on to the Icelandic gunboat but he refused. Another demanded to see his papers, but the skipper told him: “Go jump in the ocean and get lost.” Crockwell and his crew were eventually saved by the intervention of HMS Eastbourne. Tensions reignited in 1973 when Iceland extended its exclusive fishing zone to 50 miles. Royal Navy frigates were again deployed to protest British trawlers, the British embassy in Reykjavik was stoned and a Grimsby trawler was shot at. Ramming and net-cutting incidents increased again in 1976, when the zone was increased to 200 miles, an extension endorsed by the European Community, the forerunner of the EU. On 1 June of that year, however, an agreement was reached after Nato-mediated sessions that Britain would be allowed to keep 24 trawlers within the 200-mile zone as long as their catch was limited to 50,000 tonnes. As Sir Alan West, a former admiral and chief of naval staff, said about the current plans for Royal Navy involvement: “There is no doubt if you are a fisherman who has fished for years there – they are, as our fishermen are, quite stormy people – and you get a bit of a punch-up and you might need some marines and things.” The effects of the 1976 deal were to have a devastating impact on British trawlermen fishing Arctic waters, most of whom were made redundant. The government announced in 2000 that those affected and their families would share a £25m compensation package. • This article was amended on 14 December 2020 because Iceland does not have a navy, as an earlier version said. This has been corrected to refer to the Icelandic coastguard.