Sea Control - Sea Control 206 - The Cod Wars with Will Reynolds and Walker Mills

Episode Date: October 11, 2020

Links1. "The Cod Wars and Today: Lessons from an Almost War," Walker Mills, CIMSEC, July 28, 2020.2. "What Price Cod?: A Tugmaster's View of the Cod Wars," Norman Story, Hutton Press, January 1, 1992.3. "Stand Up a Joint Interagency Task Force to Fight Illegal Fishing," Claude Berube, CIMSEC, July 21, 2020.4. "The Fishing Wars are Coming," James Stavridis and Johan Bergenas, The Washington Post, September 13, 2017.

Hey folks, Jared here. We just conclude a packed week here at SimSec. Go back and check out the initial offering from Roxandra Basilka on our women in maritime security topic. She interviewed Dr. Jessica Larson. We also had the Hudson Institute's Brian Clark and Tim Walton discussing their report, American Sea Power at a Crossroads, and Bilge Pumps 18 with Alex Andrak completely unsupervised in Jamie's absence. With that said, I still want to preface the episode with our usual disclaimer that all opinions are our own and not representative of any institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. Keep tuning in. We're going to have some exciting news about some more changes for sea control coming very soon. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men.

Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. This week, we're tackling the Cod Wars, that mid-20th century showdown between the mighty Royal Navy and some of the Icelandic cod fishermen. So joining me today are Walker Mills, author of The Cod Wars and Today, Lessons from an Almos War. Walker's article appeared on SimSec as part of the recently concluded Ocean Governance Week. You can find it at simsec.org or at the link in our show notes. Walker, thank you for joining us. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners and telling us a bit about your background? Absolutely. First, Jared, thank you for having me on the show.

Excited to be here. I'm a Marine Infantry Officer working in Cartagena, Colombia, teaching at the Colombian Naval Academy. I just finished a Master's in International Relations from King's College in London, and I also volunteer as an Associate Editor at CIMSEC. Thanks, Walker. And then also joining us is Will Reynolds. So Will wrote his Master's Thesis on the Cod Wars. Will, I think you're new to our audience. Would you mind introducing yourself? Hi there. Thanks again also for having me. This is my first podcast, so apologies for any jitters. But I am a doctoral candidate at King's College London with the Centre for Grand Strategy in the War Studies Department, so same area that Walker's from. And I did my, as you said, dissertation

in my MA years on the cod wars. Well, thank you both again for coming on. Will, you're our acknowledged expert here on the topic for the purposes of the podcast. What intrigued you enough to write an entire master's thesis on the cod wars um so a lot of um credit has to go to my supervisor who's my supervisor currently as well dr alessio patalano we were looking at the time at japanese and chinese coast guards and how they interacted in the maritime space and we're still working a bit on that and i thought i'm quite a bit of a fan of applied history which is another aspect of the center for grand strategy and i believed we could use history to help inform not necessarily the minutiae but the broad strokes of what was happening possibly in the

singakudayo island dispute and in the south china sea um so i started looking at the cod wars my ba dissertation was on the royal navy in the 1970s and it cropped up once or twice and i went oh that's that's interesting what's that and one thing led to another and it became a fascinating topic that i couldn't quite drag myself away from and walker i think your title gives a hint to where your head was, but what inspired you to write about the cod wars and why do you think it's important? So I actually got interested in cod reading, just doing some pleasure reading a book by Mark Kurlansky called Cod, a biography of the fish that changed the world. And it introduced this idea of the cod wars. And I just couldn't let it go, especially because I think

maritime disputes, specifically fishing disputes are really becoming a bigger deal. And SimSec had some really great commentary a couple weeks ago about that. But the piece that really stood out to me was Claude Baroub and just kind of how important these disputes are becoming and that they can turn into a full-blown conflict or nearly a full-blown conflict between two nations that are both in NATO, two Western democratic allies. And that's how important these issues are. Yeah, I do feel like we're on the precipice of a golden age of fishing conflicts, if we're not in one already. But cod wars implies more than one, and in fact, there were three. So Walker, what caused the first cod war? Well, before I get into the first cod war, I should

clarify, Jared, that there was actually a proto-cod war in 1949, also between Iceland and and the uk and really what's going on here is that iceland is deciding that they want to extend their exclusive economic zone to protect their fishermen and this is coming just after the the second world war and they're realizing that their fishing stocks of cod are depleting faster than than they would like and a lot of this fishing this depletion is coming from these these big British fishing fleet. So first in 1949, they extend from three miles to four miles. But that's not really a huge deal to these British trawler fleets. And then in 1958, with the first cod war, they moved from four miles to 12 miles for their exclusive economic zone. And that's a really big

deal because that covers a lot of the area that these British fishing ships like to use. So that's really what triggers this, is it's an expansion of Iceland's exclusive economic zone, which means that these British fishermen are not going to be able to fish near the coast of Iceland, which is an area that they have been fishing, you know, I think they made the claim that they've been fishing there for 500 years. Thanks. Will, what can you tell us about the forces representing each side in 1958? We're pretty familiar with debates about Royal Navy fleet size today, decrying the ever shrinking fleet though i think it's actually growing right now but it's slightly different animal in 1958 um yes the the navy was very different back then

though you will get the the natural caveat that vessels you see nowadays are 10 20 times more effective than they were now ultimately numbers still matter the raw navy in 1958 it should be important to point out it was also very different from the navy in 1970s which faced the second and third cod wars you had a huge transformation over um the 60s through planning but also politically because remember in 1968 the uk decided to withdraw from east of suez so that factored into the navy's planning as well the the carrier fleet was starting to be run down the last carrier 1979, I believe, the last fleet carrier, I should say. Hermes and Invincible were about the Falklands War. But to give you an idea of what the force was in the first Cod War as an example,

and not to go into too much detail, the backbone of the fleet for this sort of engagement was the Fishery Protection Squadron. And these usually consisted of second-rate frigates. So the epitome would be a Type 14 Blackwood class, which is about a 1,020-tonne anti-submarine warfare escort vessel now this is very sort of bare bones they were apparently horrible to be on when there was some one part of the cod wars i love are the anecdotal stories because it's ultimately not just a clash of nations it's a clash of men at sea some of the hardiest men and some of the most obnoxious men um on the planet because fishermen if anyone's had any experience with them do not like being told what to do but when it came to the royal navy these black woods you had to to get

from one side of the other you had to get up onto the deck and then back under the deck so obviously in in the north sea and these sort of temperatures that was quite horrifying for many of the sailors so you had those vessels but when when the cod war really heated up you had i actually wrote the list of all of them just to try and to put it into perspective you had seven of its eight daring class destroyers deployed so that's each daring is about 2800 tons you had three of its four weapon class destroyers which are 2,280 tons five at seven battle class late versions six of its seven battle class early versions three of its uh car class which about 2,000 tons again and so on so forth up until the point where you had individually 63 royal navy vessels involved in this conflict

which accumulated 192 individual patrols all in all of course you also had 10 royal fleet auxiliary vessels they should also be mentioned that played a very significant role in maintaining the fleet at the time but it's kind of um ridiculous to think how much resources this conflict sucked up you always had three to four on station but you the fact that 63 of these over the entire lifetime had to go in and out really says something to how intensive a patrol up there to maintain the fishing zones was for the royal navy well let me ask this i want to go back to one thing that you said you mentioned the fisheries protection squadron was fisheries protection a royal navy mission and is it still a royal navy mission uh yes fishery protection i believe is the oldest

squadron in the fleet historically it was ultimately the first job of the navy when it when it came about it wasn't defense against other states so that naturally um also cropped up the fishery protection squadron to this day does still exist though from what i'm aware of it's it's it's slowly shifting over to I think it's called like the literal strike squadron now or literal fleet operations and they consist of the fishery protection squadron right now consists of the batch batch one so in America you call it a flight flight one river class vessels most of them were phased out when we were coming up to 2015 2015 security defense review but a few of them were brought back into service following the brexit vote to bolster the fishery protection fleet

and you also have some batch two rivers so flight twos but they are predominantly for overseas deployment and i don't believe they're connected to fishery protection at all so what then did iceland have to oppose the might of the royal navy uh yes um poor iceland uh they had they had eight vessels committed to the first cod war so which was their entire fleet i'm not saying that they had others to commit this was it um and they consisted of at the time the odin which came into service halfway through the first cod war the thought before the albert the gator the tear the maria julia the saborg and the agir now apologies for any nordic listeners i probably butchered half of those names but their tonnage consisted of the odin was the heaviest at a

thousand tons and the tear was the lightest at 33 and they usually drifted between the 900 and 200 mark in terms of tonnage that did change in the next two cod wars the they started getting up to 2 000 tons or one and a half thousand tons and they had helicopter flight decks on the back so the the icelandic coast guard was still modernizing at this point but they were ultimately a lot of these were were trawler ex-trawlers with very small pounder guns attached to the front um a very famous coast guard vessel called the balder in the third cod war which was particularly noted for being highly aggressive and and was kind of scary for the royal navy actually um was an ex whaler ship which had just been um maintained i should also add because there are going to be

people who might be aware of this it wasn't just the royal navy protecting the fishing ships the ministry of agriculture fisheries and food uh math deployed civilian defense tugs in the second and third cod war and these were big sort of uh bulky tugs in the second cod war it was the Englishman, the Irishman, the Lloydsman, the Statesman, and the Welshman. And in the third cod war, it was the Lloydsman, the Southfeller, the Star Aquarius, the Star Polaris, the Star Sirius, and the Statesman. The Lloydsman in particular was a very well-known ship. And there's actually a book by a guy called Norman Story who served as shipmaster for some of these books. And it's really interesting to read for anecdotal evidence. And it's just a fun read,

actually, for those interested in operating at sea and having a bit of a bash about with the Icelandic Coast Guard vessels. So we'll throw a link to that in the show notes. Do you have the name of Norman's story's book? I do, I do. I would have to bring it up, but I believe it is At What Price Cod? That's not all, that's not the entire title, but it's, oh, here we go. What Price Cod? A Tugmaster's View of the Cod Wars. Fantastic. Thank you. So how did the First War unfold then? What ultimately caused the British to back down? So the First War was not a guaranteed thing the the uh clash in interests were but the um the escalation to the the kinetic i say trying to avoid buzzwords um was actually predominantly due to one man's pride and that

was it and this is what my research was about for the thesis it was about the role of force in maritime uh law enforcement engagements who controlled it and who had the most influence over and in the operational space i found it could be um have significant effects on the strategic so for the first cod war the most important thing which walker does mention and bring up is the uh the boarding of the northern foam which was on the 2nd of september there was a bit of active activity on the 1st of september which is when the 12 mile limit came into effect but it was the 2nd of september where the uh the gloves came off around 0800 it was um the anderson not the anderson sorry commodore anderson who was in charge of the fishery protection unit

received a report that the trawler was being arrested and boarded by the four maria julia about six six seven miles off the east coast of iceland on a rather again to bring up the anecdotal on a rather amusing note the wireless operator of the northern foam had locked himself in the radio room and told the approaching hms hound on the radio that he had an axe and that quote the first uh bastard that tried to get through the door would have his blank hands chopped off so again goes to the fishermen being quite unruly folk there the uh the eastborn which was the flagship for the fishery protection squadron turned up anderson went aboard the four and conversed in norwegian with captain christopherson who was the captain of the four

and asked could you remove your boarding team please um you're not allowed to do this he refused and then promptly sailed off leaving his boarding team on the trawler so we had this interesting point where the boarding team became prisoners of war though there was no war so no one really knew what to do with them so in the end uh the royal navy decided to give them a rowing boat instead go to shore within range of course but they lost a rowing boat essentially because of this this problem they couldn't take them back home but it all came down to captain christopherson he was told the morning before the attack all all of the captains were told do not do anything that would inflame or escalate the situation

by a guy called Sigurdsson, who was head of the Coast Guard. But Kristofferson was determined to act as he saw fit when his nation's honour was at stake. And an official from the Icelandic PM's office actually later recalled, I remember that we were rather worried about Erika, which is the captain, because he was considered rather too pugnacious.

So he caused the escalation because he thought he could do, you know he knew what he was doing he was the shipmaster he was the icelandic coast guard he was icelandic he was not going to let these british trawlers fish despite what he'd been told by his political overlords and at this point it became it escalated the domestics of both sides were inflamed and and so on so forth from that point on the first cod war was going to escalate i should point out though the first cod war was not really a um dangerous or active as say the second and third the second and third cod war are far more interesting to look at in terms of operational force being used the first cod war though to sum it up was the royal navy under

operation whippet operated three boxes each about 30 miles long named butterscotch toffee apple and spearmint and the trawlers basically had to stay in these boxes so it's kind of like convoy escort but in a in a space it was a sea control in essence and each royal navy ship would be assigned to a box and you'd have a fourth one in reserve that would sort of go backwards and forwards and nothing really happened because it's very hard to board a trawler when the royal navy are breathing down your necks it's very hard to board a trawler full stop in the northern sea especially if they've got they have potato guns and hooks and axes and they weren't letting you anywhere near you but when you've got a royal navy ship also behind you when you're trying to do this nothing really

came of it you had one or two accidental rams you sometimes had captains threatening to sink each other um hms russell's captain was quite famous for threatening to sink the icelandic coast guard a few times, but he was told to cool off, essentially. And you didn't see much escalation above that threshold. You even saw the Icelandic Coast Guard and Royal Navy doing joint SAR operations quite regularly. And the Captain of the Four and Commodore Anderson quite regularly exchanged signals every morning, whether they were little prayers or little conversations about how they were doing. So it wasn't as aggressive or stereotypical as you expect when compared to third and second cod war when they were really bashing into each other thanks uh walker i'm

gonna give you an opportunity here do you do you have any follow-up questions on the first cod war before i asked you to explain what precipitated the second and third ones no i i'd say let's let's get into it okay uh i'm riveted at this point uh with everything you've laid out will we have evocative names you have angry fishermen um but walker i'm going to come back to you uh what precipitated the second and third cod wars so jared really you have the same thing happen twice more uh that iceland decides hey we need to expand our exclusive economic zone and really what they're doing is is protecting in their own minds their fisheries and it's important to recognize that at the same this is at the same time that all over the world

Other countries are starting to expand their exclusive economic zones, and this is being recognized by the United Nations as well. So this isn't just Iceland kind of moving out on its own, but I think it's more significant because it's close to the UK and it's in somewhere where they have traditionally had access. And so it kind of is probably, I would say, and Will can jump in on this, I think it's probably a point of pride for the UK and specifically those fishing fleets. And I think there's also a point of tension is that fishing fleets, and we see this not just in this example, but in other maritime disputes, it's one of those industries that has somewhat of a maybe outsized emotional response and cultural representation for a country beyond perhaps the immediate economic impacts of having to forego those fishing grounds or the fishermen who were actually impacted. So the second Cod War begins in 1972, and there Iceland expands their exclusive economic zone from 12 to 50 miles, which is pretty big. I mean, that's more than doubling, more than four times, I think. And so that's a big one. Then in 1975, they go from 50 miles to 200 miles.

So they're really pushing out. And I think I have to think that some of these Icelandic politicians are realizing at this point that they have a really huge amount of leverage over the British, over the UK, because they're flirting with this idea that, hey, we will ask the Soviet Union to back us up. Maybe we'll if this is important enough to us that we might leave NATO, you know, in their Iceland, even though it doesn't really have a military as a founding member of the NATO alliance. And it brought the geography of Iceland and there was an American contingent of troops stationed in Iceland. And that's a really big that could be that could have been almost a crippling blow to the alliance's ability to defend the northern approaches to the to the Atlantic. And so I think for that reason, the United Kingdom didn't really have a lot of support in their conflict with with Iceland, at least from the United States. So the Icelanders kind of realize that they they can do this again. And this is at the same time that this is happening in other parts of the world, that smaller nations are exerting their their exclusive economic zones and kind of protecting their their fisheries.

And then I think we saw some – Will sort of hinted at the tactics in the First God War, but we saw some different tactics in the case of the Second and Third Wars. What were the Icelandic innovations there? Sure. The one that kind of captured my imagination was the Icelanders – I'm sorry, I hope that's the right term. um they came up with basically a big hook and they're they would tow it across the trawler lines and cut the nets and they actually came up with this at the end of the of the first cod war but like will was saying you know it wasn't particularly kinetic um and they didn't want to go in those uh boxes where the royal navy was patrolling so they basically say as a sea cut it

out in the second uh and third cod wars and they started cutting the trawler nets um which is you know it's not hurting anybody um you know it's not particularly dangerous but if you're a fisherman you know when your net gets cut first you lose all the fish in your net and then you lose your your big nets um and if you don't have another set on board then you got to go back um and buy another one you know and those are not not cheap and this is also in addition to fishing only in the boxes that the royal navy has set up really limits your ability to fish where the fish are so you know we have to understand i think that during these conflicts even though the fishermen are continuing to push the push the limits they're also operating at a

loss i mean they're they're um not really able to sustain the fishing that they would have been able to. And so I think it's kind of a situation where they're fighting and they want to keep contesting the claims, but they also can't do this forever. And then I think from an Icelandic perspective, introducing hooks is another way to kind of up the ante without shooting at anybody, without boarding vessels. And just for that reason, you know, I think it's a really kind of innovative but also simple uh way that that they were able to um contest uh the the british fishermen in there and what they perceive as their waters thanks so will you hinted at this in one of your earlier answers so would you mind expanding a little bit on the sort of the operational

innovations that we're seeing uh whether it's from the british or the icelandic side um of course yes so the the the warp cutter um is basically exactly what's warped described it's i think it's quite similar to certain types of demining that occurred in the second world war at least that's the comparison that's made in the literature um they're they're not particularly dangerous the argument from the fish fishermen fishermen at the time was that the tension of the warp line would fire back up and hit one of them there was a report that a german fisherman from west germany was was decapitated by one but i can't corroborate that so take that with a pinch of salt um but it could happen because the cod wars was not just a britain thing west germany

the netherlands belgium and norway were involved in various various ways they all sort of um found their own ways of dealing with it but just to ram home how bad the warp cutting could be for trawlman a trawlman's wages are not um they're defined by how much they catch they they come under conglomerates so bigger larger fishing companies which insure them and organize them so a if a war if a single warp line was cut it would take around 18 hours to replace it and two days if both warp lines were gone um by cutting both warp lines um skipper ken knox who's a said that you would lose two lengths of trawl rope two trawl doors two breedles one full set of ground bobbins five ground ropes two dan leo bobbins one full trawl so the net and eight

time to cod end protectors um not only did they lose time because their their wage is defined by how much fish they catch so they lost time on the fishing fields but also a trawler would lose money um because the wages would be deducted to refund the costs so you would get to the point and will charlton it was another trawler in a uh icelandic documentary that was done he said to the interviewer It got to the stage where you didn't want to go into Icelandic waters anymore because you knew you weren't going to make any money. Another one said, I'd rather be on the dole, which is the UK version of social welfare benefits. That's the slang term for it. He said, I'd rather be at home doing nothing, having that, because I would make more money on the dole than I would fishing. And this was the main crux of the issue for Britain in the second and third Cod War.

The first one was absolutely about pride. And Gunda Johansson, who was a big writer and researcher of the codwaters, devised it into five Ps, and Pride was one of them. But by the Second and Third Cod War, it was readily recognised that the UK could not fight this. They rather wanted to retard and slow down the measures so that they could move and re-roll the fishermen into different jobs, rather than have the populations of Hull and Grimsby, the two big fishing towns, all instantly go on to benefits. Grimsby had a population of about 300,000 at that time. That's more than the entire population of Iceland, which was 200,000. But if we go into operations, the Royal Navy dropped the haven system in the Second and Third Cod War.

It instead went to DFA's, Designated Fishing Areas, which are about 100 miles long on the inner 12-mile edge. And what they would do is they decided we can't box these fishermen anymore in. So we're going to use our Royal Navy ships to mark Coast Guard vessels. And whenever they come into the DFA, you steam up to meet them and you just follow them. So that way, if they start to make trouble, you can try and hit them that way or try and ride them off. Close marking is what it was called. And this was established under a rule of engagement set called Operation Dewey or Order Dewey. and this was divided into four sort of options alpha through to delta with alpha being the most

passive which is you just sit and watch and delta being weapon authorization you're allowed to use your weapons it never got up to delta it got up to charlie once and it got very dangerous when it got up to charlie um but it never got to delta weapons were never used instead charlie allowed you to get into close proximity and it's called riding them off which is you would put your ship very close to them and try and use your mass and bulk to ride the opponent away or push them off not physically touch them though that was that was basically the the insinuation but you would put yourself as close as you could to propel the opponent away with with your mass and this was incorporated into the fleet operational and tactical instructions set called the FOTI so it

was really easy for Royal Navy officers to just go to this manual and go oh they want me to do this this this right so the command and control was very effective um on the royal navy side when it came to uh engagements but you did have a lot of times fleet captains requesting um to go up in escalation to from bravo to charlie and a lot of and every single time except once the ministry of defense and whitehall said no so there was a lot of it's very important to know there was a lot of political control here it was very much the escalation was very well controlled on the uk side. Not so much on the Icelandic side, as already proven, but on the UK side, there's a lot of control of force. Thanks. So then, Will, what was the impetus for expanding the Icelandic EEZ to

begin with? Is it just a matter of supply and demand as far as what's available in the water? Yes, so Walker touched on this. It was very much an issue of conservation. For the Icelanders, the primary the primary impetus was um to increase their fishing but to protect the stocks at the same time it was actually it would it would not be remiss to say it felt like an existential conflict to them it was really that important it wasn't simply a matter of uh sort of capitalistic increasing and going we just need more fish it was genuinely a concern prior to the first cod war around 89 percent of Iceland's exports came from fish products and so the capitalization and protection of them were vital the economic reliance on these fish were highlighted really

well in the 1960s so just following the end of the first war following the agreement the Icelanders had an economic boom thanks to a record of herring catches so nothing to do with cod actually but the herring suddenly disappeared in the mid-1960s it just it just stopped and you saw a real drop in economic capita um income per capita dropped in excess of 16 between 1966 and 68 so this is this is huge for icelanders um a bbc panorama team went to iceland in 1972 so panorama is an investigatory program from the bbc and they went to interview people at keflavik which is where close to where the airbase nato airbase is and the analysis of their interviews when they got back was and i quote icelanders are haunted by the fear that one day the fish will no longer be there

um so the main focus was this existential fear of the fish disappearing and then iceland not having an economic base anymore there was nothing else except the the monetary support from nato for the keflavik base and the the the money generated by the service personnel there um the most important aspect of it for them was the 50 mile limit it was always 50 miles the the four mile and 12 mile were always a means to an end to get to the 50 miles mainly because norman story comments on this actually when he spoke to british trawler men when it got to the 200 mile zone it was it was almost recognizable but even at the 50 it was recognizable that the industry would fail because there were very few if no cod fisheries outside 60

miles i think so the 50 mile limit was was their primary aim and that was what they were aiming for they eventually went full 200 because that was the way which i think we'll go on to later that was the way things were heading internationally yeah that leads directly into my next question is this is a really interesting time as most mariners know regulations for the avoidance of collisions at sea or coal rigs were adopted in 1972 so the shorthand for those is coal rig 72 what was going on off Iceland contribute in any way to the adoption of the coal rigs? And then what, what was going on with UNCLOS at this time? So I don't know too much about coal rigs in terms of its connection.

Walker might actually know a lot more about this. But I can tell you that the rules of the road were being observed at that time, but they were being, they were actually being weaponized. You had Chris Harding, who was on board HMS Yarmouth in 1976, noted that when they were doing close markings so getting close to the uh the icelandic coastguard vessels this is third cod war now he said when we were marking we placed ourselves between the fishing fleet and the coastguard vessel preferably in such a way that if the icgv the icelandic coastguard vessel should try and make for our trawlers and attempt to cross our bowels or make

any other significantly dangerous maneuver near us then we would have the law of the sea on our side to that end all our course and speed changes were meticulously logged so it could be used as evidence if necessary now that makes it sound like the royal navy was just trying to make sure it was in the right however another interview by um captain paul canter of hms juno he admitted that if we were going to have a collision we always tried to make sure it was on the port side rules of the road would then lay blame on the icelanders so there's there's thinking going on here it's not it's it's not um just oh we're we're following the rules it's no if we're going to have a fight here you're going to be the ones in the wrong because we're going to weaponize the rules

here. And you did get instances where Royal Navy ships would get in front of Icelandic Coast Guard vessels so that they had to slow down. And then when they weren't watching, a civil defense tug would ram them in the aft section. You'd have all these instances where rules were being used. So I don't know if there's, I don't know if call regs can be weaponized in such a way, but it'd be interesting to see if that has been done. I honestly don't know. It's not my area. In terms of UNCLOS, I think it wasn't that the Cod Wars affected UNCLOS, it was that UNCLOS affected the Cod Wars. So you had UNCLOS, UNCLOS 2 and UNCLOS 3, which were the three meetings. Between the four and 12 mile extension, there was an agreement to wait for the UN to confer on the topic. So

Iceland agreed to wait. Prior to 1958, you had the Latin American states really going for it. So Peru declared a 200 nautical mile territorial limit economic zones were not a thing at this point it was territorial limits ecuador fired on a californian tuna fisherman trawler and then literally put their hands up and went well you're not going to do anything about it because the communists and the americans agreed and didn't didn't do anything about it but you had these small states a really good person to look at for small states is dr hillary briffer she hasn't got anything out yet but she does small state grand strategy and she would she would know stuff about this, how they weaponize strategy and laws to benefit the small state at its best. So following

this, you had the International Law Commission, which organized the first conference on February and April 1958. Four conventions were adopted. So you had the high seas, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, and the continental shelf, fishing and conservation of living resources on the high seas. However, they didn't get the two thirds you needed to adopt a 12 mile limit. the uk had actually proposed a six mile limit iceland obviously didn't and as soon as that finished after april september the first came along 12 mile limit was unilaterally fired up by iceland uncross 2 opened on the 16th of march 1960 which was actually still during the first war and at this point the uk hinted it was willing to accept 12 miles with some historic rights

it had been worn down it realized this was happening it wanted the historic rights to be between six and 12 miles it was agreed in whitehall by now that 12 miles was was inevitable uh and they eventually though they weren't particularly happy with it agreed with the us and canada at unclos on a six plus six plan so six miles territorial and six miles with limited historic rights so you can see the uk strategy here it's like oh we want the historic rights within the six they went along with it iceland naturally wanted 12 with no rights at all and they were determined to stick with it even if unclos 2 said they weren't allowed to do that So they were going to break the law if the law didn't come up in their favor.

They didn't have to worry in the end because the vote surprisingly didn't get two thirds. Everyone thought it would. It was actually some big Western allies that said no. It was Ecuador, Chile, Japan and the Philippines who all said no, actually, because they wanted these 200 mile limits. They weren't going to agree on that at the time. By the time the Second Cold War, it was recognized that the world opinion was shifting towards 50 limits. and by UNCLOS 3 which started in during the second war in December 1973 Britain wanted actually wanted a 200 mile limit because um it would give it access to oil and gas and they went right well we want 200 so there was an acceptance within Whitehall that the fishing

industry the distanced fishing industry was doomed uh and the aim was like I said a bit earlier was to secure a long enough transition to allow a more gentler change for the fishing community It was expected by all at this convention that it would be signed. However, the agreement wasn't signed, not because of the limit per se, but there were arguments over freedom of the high seas, archipelagos, straits. Ironically, all the arguments we're having right now. And Iceland naturally didn't wait and declared its 200 limit. So UNCLOS was affecting the Cod Wars more than vice versa in this instance. Thank you. Walker, we had a number of opportunities there to throw it over to you. Do you have anything additional on Colregs or UNCLOS? No. And I think Will put it really well. And, you know, he's also much more the expert in terms of the cod wars than I would. I would just add that I think, and Will touched on this, the Cold War is going on at the same time. So it's these maritime disputes that are happening in the Cod Wars. It's happening kind of at the same time as UNCLOS is being negotiated a couple of different times.

And Iceland is using its key maritime terrain in the northern Atlantic and saying – I think at one point they're really flirting with the idea of kind of kicking out the Americans in Keflavik and bringing in the Soviet Union. And so it's more – it's in the context of small states, like Will said, exerting more influence in their territorial seas and then what – they didn't use the term at the time, but what we would call now their exclusive economic zone. So it's – the cod wars is kind of tied into these greater issues, and that's part of the reason I think it's really interesting. Thanks, Indy. To get to your point on weaponizing coal rigs or rules for the road, well, that absolutely did go on during the Cold War with Soviet vessels were known for overtaking American formations. And if you're the overtaking vessel, you are the giveaway vessel.

So you have to stay out of the way. But then they would turn in front of the American formation, which is sort of weaponizing coal rigs. And I think you could actually make a pretty good argument that that's what the Chinese are doing today by using their maritime militia who for all intents and purposes appear to be fishermen if you look at the hierarchy of vessels within the coal rigs the warship is normally required to give way to the fishing vessel if you think it's fishing and you don't know so the benefit of the doubt typically goes to the fishing vessel so you have to stay out its way

um walker you drew a number of conclusions from the outcomes in your article uh could you explain those please yeah absolutely um and and before i do actually jerry i want to bring this up i i saw news uh this morning or last night that there was just an incident with uh a russian naval vessels kind of interfering and moving through a fishing fleet in the in the north pacific near the in the Bering Sea. And so I think your your point is absolutely spot on that we're seeing in current events, the same kind of questions and issues and disputes playing out in the maritime sphere. And this is happening both, I think, as great, great power competition using my using my air quotes here, is kind of heating up with the United States and China. And Russia is

a part of that too. And then also, as the world population booms, and fishing stocks continue to be depleted, fishing fleets are more aggressively looking for a new fishing ground. And I think, you know, that fishing and fishing rights is going to be more important to competition between the United States and China than than it was in the Cold War. And one of the reasons I think that, as I mentioned, the the article by Claude Berube, and I hope I'm getting his name right. It's Berube. But yeah, Claude's a good guy. He won't hold it against you. Claude Berube. He mentions in his article that 30, 30 percent of the world fishing fleet is Chinese, which is a huge proportion. And China is also the world's leading fish consumer. So I don't

see, and I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here, but I don't see that these disputes are going anywhere anytime soon. And we just saw a couple of weeks ago, there were, I think it was as many as 340 fishing vessels in a mast in a fleet kind of lurking outside the Ecuadorian EEZ, outside the Galapagos Islands. And I think not all of them were Chinese vessels, but most of them were. And this kind of, you know, what are we going to bring these tactics that we've seen with, like you mentioned, the people's maritime militia and aggressive Chinese fishing in the South China Sea and in the Senkaku Islands, is that going to expand to the other side of the Pacific? Are we going to keep seeing that expand in other parts of the world?

And that's, excuse me, I think, really an interesting thing to watch and also a little bit worrisome. There was a Washington Post essay by retired Admiral Stavridis. Again, I hope that's how you pronounce his name. And this is from 2017, so it's really kind of – it was kind of prescient, but he's talking about these maritime conflicts that he thinks are going to happen and how – sorry, I need to pull up the name of it. Retired Admiral James Stavridis in 2017 wrote The Fish Wars Are Coming. OK, so this is really kind of a prescient piece about the future of these maritime conflicts. And I think we're starting to see it shift a little bit or not shift, but spread from Southeast Asia and these Southeast Asian nations in Japan that have kind of had to deal with this aggressive, at times almost paramilitary fishing, overseas fishing fleet from China.

And it's increasingly happening in Latin America, which I think is worrisome for countries in the region. And now I – let me shift back to your question. I was going through your conclusions from the article that you've written. Yeah. So the conclusions in the article, I kind of drew three primary conclusions, but I think you could really – you could take us in any direction. And I think a lot of what the background that Will has given and the expertise that he has, I'm sure he can speak to this, that there's a lot of really interesting questions and conclusions that you can draw from the Cod Wars. But kind of the three that I wanted to highlight are first that small navies, but small nations can effectively contest and kind of win in the maritime sphere. So you don't need – there are other types of power, obviously, besides maritime power.

And it's not – naval power. And it's not just who has the bigger, stronger navy. It's who is going to come out on top of these conflicts. So Iceland, like Will mentioned, you know, with this little tiny coast guard, a lot of those vessels converted trawlers, comes out not just once, but three consecutive times on top of the Royal Navy. And I think that's a really important thing to remember as you have great power competition heating up and you have the big, the People's Liberation Army Navy from China and the United States Navy. But in between, you have all these kind of smaller and medium navies and powers as well. The second is asymmetry of will. And Will mentioned this too, that the Icelanders thought this, they really view this as an existential conflict for them.

It was almost all of their exports were caught and they really needed to come out on top. And I think because of that asymmetry of will, that they were able to kind of go to greater lengths, including, as I mentioned before, flirting with the idea of moving, of leaving NATO in order to come out on top and defend their maritime claims. And the third conclusion that I drew, which I think is really the most important and kind of why I'm interested in the topic, is that these maritime disputes over fishing can lead to pretty serious conflict. And there wasn't, you know, the Cod Wars were kinetic, but nobody died except maybe the West German fishermen who was maybe or maybe not decapitated that Will mentioned. But what we're seeing globally at the same time is these conflicts can be really serious. And I think often we don't recognize that. And there's a phrase, sea blindness, where we were kind of conditioned culturally and environmentally often to focus on things going on ashore. And we can forget really easily that these maritime disputes for smaller nations and nations that have a lot of their economy based in the maritime domain can be existential.

And because of that, they can lead to really serious conflict. So I just I think kind of in some we have to both be and when I say we, you know, kind of it's a royal we with the United States, the United States Navy, the greater community needs to be really wary of what can come of these disputes and how and be prepared for for when they show up so that we're not kind of caught flat footed when there are really serious disputes that erupt over something like fishing that maybe we didn't we didn't expect. Thanks. Will, I had a question about sources, but I'll gather those from you offline, and we can just post those in the show notes. I just wanted to ask if you had any final thoughts before I close it out here. Yeah, I should add, because I can literally feel the entire population of Iceland staring at me. There was one death, one confirmed death, and it was an Icelandic Coast Guard engineer. He was fixing something in the engine room when a Royal Navy ship hit it.

he dropped his blowtorch in a puddle and electrocuted himself so i feel i feel like that we should just be careful because it's linked directly to one of one of the takeaways which i think is fishing and walker mentioned this can often be exponentially far more attached to more ideological concepts than it really deserves to be for iceland it was viewed almost as a war of anti-imperialism they were a relatively young country they just become independent it was viewed does national sovereignty um and you could quite easily push that into the south china sea uh where you had the issues with vietnam where the where the uh you had the riots in vietnam i can't remember the year 2017 maybe and it and it spiked because of occurrences on the sea but i won't take up any

more time it's just should always be aware that we won't necessarily have control over this if it escalates i would say that the population that you're talking about fishermen it's It's, I would say it's charitably described as irascible as someone who spent a year in command in the Arabian Gulf doing nothing but going around and visiting fishing vessels every day slash watching what fishing vessels will do to each other in the course of the evening when nobody is really providing oversight to include, you know, shooting flares at each other or yelling at each other on the radio. there's a lot of potential for conflict with that community just based on being out at sea and

having a very minimal amount of oversight but that is all the time that we have for today I'd like to thank my guests Will Reynolds and Walker Mills. Will where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So you can find me predominantly online on Twitter under war underscore student my name's now I've now removed myself from anonymity not that the world really cares. But that's happened. I'm currently working on my PhD thesis, which has nothing to do with this. It's on Britain and Japan and grand strategy, how Japan influences Britain. But I am hoping to eventually release a couple of articles from my MA thesis into a more public domain to be read and looked at. Thank you again for inviting me on, by the way. Absolutely. And Walker, same question

to you. Where can we find you and what are you working on next? Hi. Yeah, I want to say thanks again for bringing me on. You know, both an opportunity to share and an opportunity to learn from Will. I appreciate the correction. You can find me on Twitter at WD Mills 1992. And right now I'm kind of working on a set of papers. You know, I like to submit to the essay contest that USNI Proceedings has got going on. And I just started a master's program with the Department of Homeland Security out of the Naval Postgraduate School. So looking forward to get started with that. Well, thank you both again for joining me and to our listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Sea Control is produced by Keegan Ingersoll.

A pot of rum and a pot of gin, oh, where have they put it in the alley? A pot of wine, both white and red, oh, put it on the shimbo now. So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley. Where have they put it in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley. Put it on the shimbo now.