A blockade runner is a merchant vessel used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait. It is usually light and fast, using stealth and speed rather than confronting the blockaders in order to break the blockade. Blockade runners usually transport cargo, for example bringing food or arms to a blockaded city. They have also carried mail in an attempt to communicate with the outside world.
John Charles Bigham, 1st Viscount Mersey, was a British jurist and politician. After early success as a lawyer and a less successful spell as a politician, he was appointed a judge and worked in commercial law.
SMS Seeadler was a three-masted steel-hulled sailing ship. She was one of the last fighting sailing ships to be used in war when she served as a merchant raider with Imperial Germany in World War I. Built as the British-flagged Pass of Balmaha, she was captured by the German submarine SM U-36, and in 1916 converted to a commerce raider. As Seeadler she had a successful raiding career, capturing and sinking 15 ships in 225 days until she was wrecked, in 2 August 1917, in French Polynesia.
The Thrasher incident, as it became known in US media, was a political and diplomatic incident in 1915, when the United States was still neutral in World War I. On 28 March 1915 the German U-boat U-28 sank the British steamship Falaba by torpedo, killing more than 100 people. One of the victims was a passenger from the US, Leon Chester Thrasher.
A merchant submarine is a type of submarine intended for trade, and being without armaments, it is not considered a warship like most other types of submarines. The intended use would be blockade running, or to dive under Arctic ice.
The Annie Larsen affair was a gun-running plot in the United States during World War I. The plot, involving India's Ghadar Party, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the German Foreign office, was a part of the larger so-called "Hindu–German Conspiracy", and it was the prime offence cited in the 1917 Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial, described at the time as the longest and most expensive trial in American legal history.
SS Georgia was a passenger and cargo ship that was launched in Germany in 1891 as Pickhuben. The Hamburg America Line acquired her in 1892, and renamed her Georgia in 1895. In 1915 a US company bought her and renamed her Housatonic.
USS Wilhelmina (ID-2168) was a transport for the United States Navy during World War I. Built in 1909 for Matson Navigation Company as SS Wilhelmina, she sailed from the West Coast of the United States to Hawaii until 1917. After her war service, she was returned to Matson and resumed Pacific Ocean service. In the late 1930s she was laid up in San Francisco, California, until sold to a British shipping company in 1940. While a part of a convoy sailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, she was sunk by U-94 on 2 December 1940.
The Blockade of Germany, or the Blockade of Europe, occurred from 1914 to 1919. The prolonged naval blockade was conducted by the Allies during and after World War I in an effort to restrict the maritime supply of goods to the Central Powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The blockade is considered one of the key elements in the eventual Allied victory in the war. In December 1918, the German Board of Public Health claimed that 763,000 German civilians had already died from starvation and disease caused by the blockade. An academic study done in 1928 put the death toll at 424,000. An additional 100,000 people may have died during the post-armistice continuation of the blockade in 1919. However, it has been pointed out that there was an even larger civilian excess mortality during the war in the United Kingdom, that was much less affected by food shortages.
SS Zaanland was a cargo steamship that was built in Scotland in 1900 for Dutch owners, and sunk in a collision in 1918. She was built for the Zuid-Amerika Lijn, which in 1908 became Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd. The US Government requisitioned her in March 1918 as USS Zaanland, with the Naval Registry Identification Number ID–2746. She was sunk in a collision less than two months later.
SS Batavier II was a steam packet for the Batavier Line that sailed between Rotterdam and London for most of her career. The ship was built in 1897 by the Gourlay Brothers of Dundee. The Dutch ship could carry a limited amount of freight and up to 321 passengers. She was rebuilt in 1909 which increased her length by over 5 metres (16 ft).
The U-boat campaign from 1914 to 1918 was the World War I naval campaign fought by German U-boats against the trade routes of the Allies. It took place largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean. The German Empire relied on imports for food and domestic food production and the United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed its population, and both required raw materials to supply their war industry; the powers aimed, therefore, to blockade one another. The British had the Royal Navy which was superior in numbers and could operate on most of the world's oceans because of the British Empire, whereas the Imperial German Navy surface fleet was mainly restricted to the German Bight, and used commerce raiders and submarine warfare to operate elsewhere.
The Blockade of Germany (1939–1945), also known as the Economic War, involved operations carried out during World War II by the British Empire and by France in order to restrict the supplies of minerals, fuel, metals, food and textiles needed by Nazi Germany – and later by Fascist Italy – in order to sustain their war efforts. The economic war consisted mainly of a naval blockade, which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic, but also included the bombing of economically important targets and the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries in order to prevent their sale to the Axis powers.
The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. The attack took place in the declared maritime war-zone around the UK, three months after unrestricted submarine warfare against the ships of the United Kingdom had been announced by Germany following the Allied powers' implementation of a naval blockade against it and the other Central Powers.
Cruiser rules, alternatively called prize rules is a colloquial phrase referring to the conventions regarding the attacking of a merchant ship by an armed vessel. Here cruiser is meant in its original meaning of a ship sent on an independent mission such as commerce raiding. A cruiser in modern naval terminology refers to a type of ship rather than its mission. Cruiser rules govern when it is permissible to open fire on an unarmed ship and the treatment of the crews of captured vessels, and are contrasted to unrestricted submarine warfare where submarines attack without warning and do not act to protect crew.
SS Lancing was a Norwegian whale factory ship, originally the British merchant ship Knight Errant. She passed through a number of owners, being named Rio Tiete, Omsk, Calanda, and Flackwell at different stages in her career. She was sunk off Cape Hatteras on 7 April 1942 by the German submarine U-552.
Recreational dive sites are specific places that recreational scuba divers go to enjoy the underwater environment or for training purposes. They include technical diving sites beyond the range generally accepted for recreational diving. In this context all diving done for recreational purposes is included. Professional diving tends to be done where the job is, and with the exception of diver training and leading groups of recreational divers, does not generally occur at specific sites chosen for their easy access, pleasant conditions or interesting features.
SS Balto was a Norwegian steamship that was seized by the German Submarine SM U-49 on 6 November 1916 in the Bay of Biscay, and briefly used as a depot ship. She was then scuttled in the Atlantic Ocean 70 nautical miles (130 km) north east of Cape Villano, Spain on 9 November.
The onset of the 20th century saw England as the world's foremost naval and colonial power, supported by a 100,000-man army designed to fight small wars in its outlying colonies. Since the Napoleonic Wars nearly a century earlier, Britain and Europe had enjoyed relative peace and tranquility. The onset of World War I caught the British Empire by surprise. As it increased the size of its army through conscription, one of its first tasks was to impose a complete naval blockade against Germany. It was not popular in the United States. However, it was very important to England.
A. H. Bull Steamship Company was a shipping company and passenger liner service founded in New York City in 1902 by Archibald H. Bull (1848-1920). Service started with shipping between New York and Florida. His fleet of ships then added service to other Eastcoast ports. The company is also often called the Bull Lines and the Bull Steamship Line or A. H. Bull & Company. While founded in New York, Bull soon move its headquarter to Peir 5 in Baltimore, Maryland. Bull Lines main Eastcoast ports were: Baltimore, Charleston, Philadelphia, Tampa and Norfolk, Virginia. Oversea ports: Porto Rico, Antwerp, Bordeaux, Hamburg, Bremen, Copenhagen, and West Africa. Bull Steamship Line supported the US war effort for both World War I and World War II, including the loss of ships.
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