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By Root 625 0

side, the Royal Navy was backed up by the West Germans, who were not allowed to have a military but provided “supply and protection” vessels. In the first Cod War, the only way the Coast Guard could have stopped a British trawler was to fire on it. Not only were they badly outgunned, but, as the British had suggested at the time, Icelanders did not really want to shoot and kill British seamen. But by 1958, Icelandic engineers had secretly developed a Cod War weapon, and the following year, they had armed all seven Coast Guard vessels with it. When negotiations in the first Cod War began, the Icelanders decided not to use this weapon and managed to keep it under wraps for more than ten years until the second Cod War.

In the second Cod War, a Coast Guard vessel would approach a foreign trawler to inform the captain that he was in violation of Icelandic law and should move outside the fifty-mile limit. If the captain did not agree, the Coast Guard ship would come about and, cruising at a right angle to the trawler, cross its path astern with the Coast Guard’s secret weapon pulled behind—a “trawl wire cutter.” In reality, the new weapon applied the old technology of minesweeping to fishing. One of the device’s four prongs would ensnare a trawl cable and cut it, letting loose a net worth $5,000 and whatever catch might be in it. A trawler without a trawl had nothing to do but go home. During the one-year conflict, eighty-four trawlers—sixty—nine British and fifteen German—lost their nets. To protect their nets, trawlers started fishing in pairs, one working and the other guarding the stern. But since one of every two trawlers was no longer fishing, the fishing fleet was reduced to half its normal capacity. Also, several trawlers collided from following too close in rough seas. Gale winds of sixty miles per hour are common in these waters.

After the effectiveness of the trawl wire cutter was demonstrated, the second Cod War degenerated into dodgem cars on the high seas. Trawlers attempted to prevent Coast Guard vessels from cutting their trawl by ramming them. But the Coast Guard vessels could also ram, and their reenforced hulls, built for icebreaking, made them particularly effective at this. The British were reluctant to send in the Royal Navy again because Iceland and Britain were now allies in the integrated forces of NATO. Instead, they sent four large fast tugboats, which, according to Icelanders, were to ram Coast Guard vessels. According to the British, the tugs were under orders not to ram but to position themselves so that Coast Guard vessels could not cut trawler cables. Whatever their intention, the tugs did ram a few Icelandic vessels. On March 18, 1973, an Icelandic gunboat fired live shells across the bow of a British tug, and on May 26, an Icelandic shell blew a hole in the hull of a British trawler. The British trawlers withdrew to fifty miles and refused to come back until the Royal Navy protected them. Seven British war frigates moved in, and once again the trawlers were ordered to fish in boxes. If a Coast Guard ship entered a box, frigates, tugs, and trawlers would all attempt to ram it until it sank. This led to regular collisions on the high seas but, miraculously, no loss of lives or vessels. After ships collided, both damaged vessels would limp back to their home ports.

The Icelandic government was shockingly tough. It refused to allow injured or sick British seamen into Iceland unless they arrived on their vessel, which would have meant surrendering the trawler. It blocked British NATO planes from Icelandic air traffic control and even threatened to cut diplomatic relations. Unlike Britain, Iceland depended on fishing for its entire economy; fishing was the miracle that had lifted its people from the Middle Ages to affluence. Despite a history of warm feelings between the two nations and a close alliance, Iceland was not going to yield on its only resource. NATO, concerned about this conflict within its ranks in the middle of the Cold War, began pressuring Britain to back down. In the end, Britain