The Lion's Pride Lion's Pride Volume 12 (Spring 2019) | Page 31

owned 50 percent of all “merchant marines” in the world and
successfully cut off Germany’s commercial routes with the rest of the
globe by blockading the Northern Sea from Norway to Scotland (p. 27).
As the British began their naval blockade of Germany, there were
protestations from the United States, who expected “freedom of the
seas” for trade and were resentful of the powerful Royal Navy’s
proclivity to dominate the seas and impose itself upon the rules of
maritime commerce (p. 27). Unrestricted Submarine Warfare was a
wartime policy started in 1917 by the German Empire in response to the
British naval blockade, as they struggled to supply their armies and feed
their citizens.
There are certain laws regarding what can be considered a blockade
and how it affects the trade of neutral countries. The British went
beyond the conventions of a blockade (in which neutral ships carrying
munitions and other items to support the military of the opposing side
could be considered contraband) and began seizing other supplies, such
as grain and cotton (Peck, p. 27). German Admiral von Tirpitz is quoted
by Justus Doenecke (2011) as saying matter-of-factly, “England wants
to starve us. We can play the same game. We can…torpedo every
English or allied ship which nears any harbor in Great Britain, thereby
cutting off her large food supplies” (p. 58). To do this, the German Navy
began deploying her relatively untested Unterseeboot (undersea boat, or
U-Boats). Submarines were a very recent invention and didn’t have