1/31 In October 1914 Belgium was occupied by Germany and cut off by the British blockade. It grew only 22% of its bread grain. For almost five years a neutral fleet carried over 5 million tons of food through both blockades. The sea story of the Belgian Relief. #maritimehistory
2/31 My last thread, on Belgian fishermen and seamen in 1914-1918, touched on the relief ships. This one is about them: who ran them, how they were marked, which way they had to sail, and what it cost. Some 60 to 70 ships were at sea for Belgium at any time.
3/31 The problem: Britain would not let food into occupied land, fearing the Germans would take it. Germany said feeding the Belgians was not its job. The way out was a neutral body that bought the food, shipped it and followed it all the way to the people who ate it.
4/31 That body was the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), set up in London on 22 October 1914 by Herbert Hoover, an American mining engineer and later US president. It ran a whole merchant fleet of its own, almost entirely on charter.
5/31 Its sea gate was Rotterdam: neutral, close by, and linked to Belgium by canals. On 25 October 1914 Captain J. F. Lucey, an American oil-equipment maker and Spanish-American War veteran, arrived to open an office. 150 German passes to send food on into Belgium were waiting.
6/31 Lucey cabled London that he could unload a steamer in three hours and get the food to Brussels in two or three days. The first cargoes came in the Coblentz and Iris on 1 and 2 November: 1,777 tons of flour, 414 of rice, 210 of beans and peas. Brussels had them 48 hours on.
7/31 The first ship from across the Atlantic was the Tremorvah on 15 November 1914, with 5,000 tons of food given by Nova Scotia. On 21 November the Massapequa came from New York with 3,500 tons paid by the Rockefeller Foundation, the charity of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller.
8/31 Then it grew fast. November 1914: 26,431 tons landed at Rotterdam. December: 17 ships, 58,000 tons. May 1915: 36 ships, 125,000 tons. October 1915: 44 ships, 135,000 tons. In the first year 186 full and 308 part cargoes came in.
9/31 How many ships does that take? The plan was 110,000 tons of food a month. A round trip took over two months, so about 290,000 tons of carrying capacity had to be at sea all the time: 58 steamers of 5,000 tons. Real ships were smaller, so the CRB ran 60 to 70 at once.
10/31 At first Britain allowed only neutral ships, and let British ships join once Germany promised them the same safety. In November 1914 Berlin agreed: ships carrying food for Belgium to Dutch ports would be left alone, if they carried the right papers.
11/31 Those papers were a chain. US Customs certified the cargo and where it was going. On that, the German ambassador in Washington issued a permit, and on that the German consul at the loading port issued the safe-conduct pass. The British consul added a certificate of his own.
12/31 The ship also had to be seen. Each flew a large flag reading 'Commission Belgian Relief, Rotterdam' and had cloth signs on both sides. Many also had BELGIAN RELIEF painted on the hull in huge letters. Owners were bonded to remove all of it when the service ended.
13/31 In February 1915 Germany declared the waters around Britain a war zone. Britain made every relief ship call at a British port for inspection and coal. Berlin first refused passes to ships calling in England, then on 5 March let them use the Channel, lit up by night.
14/31 Money came in part from 'state ships'. A US state filled a whole cargo: the Camino for California and St. Kentigern for New York in December 1914, then the Hannah for Kansas, the Wabana for Louisiana, the Washington for Washington and Oregon. Donors followed 'their' ship.
15/31 One state ship was the British Harpalyce, 5,940 tons, built 1911. On 10 April 1915 she left Rotterdam empty (in ballast) for Norfolk, Virginia, in relief markings. In daylight, 7 miles east of the Noord Hinder lightship, UB 4 torpedoed her without warning. 15 men died.
16/31 She had brought New England's gift in January and New York's in March. Walter Hines Page, the US ambassador in London, warned Berlin that her sinking helped those in Britain who wanted to stop the relief. Germany then gave passes for empty ships returning to England.
17/31 The North Sea was full of mines, British and German. The CRB lost six ships to mines or torpedoes there in 1915. In 1916 eleven were sunk or badly damaged, over a fifth of its fleet. As Britain took over its own ships, Belgium gave the CRB some 19 under the Belgian flag.
18/31 Rotterdam was the hinge. The CRB office on the Haringvliet ran grain elevators that sucked grain from the ship's hold straight into lighters (unpowered canal barges). It handled cargo for 9 pence a ton, less than in peacetime, and 20 or 30 ocean cargoes came in each month.
19/31 Three canal routes led into Belgium: via Terneuzen to Ghent, in lighters of up to 1,200 tons; through the Zeeland waters and the Scheldt to Antwerp, Brussels and the flour mills of Leuven; and via Dordrecht into Limburg, then on along the Meuse to Liège and Namur.
20/31 At Antwerp and Ghent the big lighters from Rotterdam were emptied into smaller ones for the local canals. Barges were easy to find at first: trade with Germany had stopped, and Belgian barges that fled to Holland in 1914 got German passes to go in and come back out.
21/31 In September 1915 the Dutch lightermen held out for higher rates, almost a strike. So the relief set up its own Ship Owning Department, the S.O.D. At its peak it had 495 lighters and 36 tugs and it moved 14,000 lighter loads. In hard winters its tugs broke ice at Rotterdam.
22/31 On 1 February 1917 Germany began unrestricted U-boat war: any ship in a wide zone around Britain and France could be sunk without warning. Neutral owners pulled out. Of 17 relief cargoes then at sea for Rotterdam, 2 arrived, 2 were torpedoed and 13 went into British ports.
23/31 Relief ships would now be spared only outside the barred zone: north of Shetland, along the coast of Norway, then down a narrow lane of 'free' water between British and German minefields to Rotterdam. Over 1,000 miles more.
24/31 Even before that, on 22 January, the Belgian Euphrates, empty and marked, was torpedoed 200 miles off Ireland; one man survived. The Danish Lars Kruse, with 2,300 tons of Argentine maize, went down off Ushant on 3 February: again one survivor, 17 dead.
25/31 On 8 March U 62 sank the Norwegian Storstad off south-west Ireland, with 10,000 tons of maize and relief markings. In May 1914, in fog on the St Lawrence, this same collier had rammed the liner Empress of Ireland, which sank in 14 minutes. 1,012 people died.
26/31 In March the Belgian Haelen and Tunisie, empty and inside the safe lane, were shelled. Six or seven of the Haelen's crew died. When the captains showed their passes the U-boat let them go. W. B. Poland, the CRB's director in Europe, blamed 'the stupidity' of its commander.
27/31 Then within a week: the Norwegian Feistein (probably mines, off Terschelling), Camilla (U-boat, 8 dead), Anna Fostenes (mine) and the Belgian Trevier, torpedoed off Scheveningen. Since sailings resumed on 28 February, 3 ships had arrived and 5 had been sunk.
28/31 In April 1917 the US entered the war and the Americans left Belgium. Spanish and Dutch patrons took over inside; the CRB kept buying and shipping. For months little got through and rations fell to starvation level. Nearly 100,000 tons stuck in Britain and France was sold.
29/31 The fix came in May 1918. The US Shipping Board, led by Edward Hurley, agreed to find half the missing ships and Britain the other half: the 'fifty-fifty' deal. Convoys were already cutting the losses. Still, 13 relief ships were lost between January 1918 and the Armistice.
30/31 The bill: 52 relief ships torpedoed, mined, shelled or wrecked, 38 of them lost. 114,000 tons of food went down, and with the 95,000 tons sold in 1917 over 200,000 tons never reached Belgium: two months' food for the whole country and northern France.
31/31 And the work: 993 ocean voyages and 1,320 short ones, 5,174,431 tons landed, 4.7 million at Rotterdam. From January 1919 relief ships came straight up the Scheldt to Antwerp. The crews were Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, British, Belgian, American. #LestWeForget