The Cod Wars

The Cod Wars were a series of three separate conflicts between Britain and Iceland which began in the late 1950s and ended in 1976. Each Cod War was sparked by Iceland expanding its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – the area of the sea it controlled – which forced British trawlers to fish further and further away from Iceland’s productive waters. Britain repeatedly fought to retain access to Icelandic waters, sending Royal Navy warships to escort and protect its trawlers, leading to serious incidents of vessels being rammed, live rounds being fired and seamen from both Britain and Iceland sustaining injuries.

Iceland before the Cod Wars

Cod
British trawlers fished in Icelandic waters due to the huge levels of cod and other whitefish present there.

With practically no industry and little productive agricultural land, Iceland’s only major resource was its fish stocks. Huge shoals of whitefish were found in its waters, with cod being by far the most abundant species. However, until the first few decades of the twentieth century, fishing in Iceland was carried out mostly on a subsistence basis. Fishermen used oar-powered boats which were carried across land and launched from beaches. Fish were caught on handlines and catches would feed the fishermen’s families who lived in small communities around the island’s coastline (1). Only a very small proportion of fish was salted and exported to Europe.

This changed in the years before the Second World War when Icelanders saw the huge catches of cod and other whitefish being made by foreign trawlers just off their coastline. Reports from the time estimated that a single trawler working in Icelandic waters could catch as many fish as three working in the North Sea (2). By buying second-hand, steam-powered trawlers with steel hulls from Britain, Iceland was able to vastly increase its catches, and the money made from exporting fish was used to expand the nation’s fishing industry. Improving technology which allowed catches to be refrigerated and later frozen further increased the amount of fish Iceland (and the other nations fishing in its waters) could catch, process and sell. Money flowed into the country, allowing the population, and their standard of living, to increase dramatically. As Mark Kurlansky writes in Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World: “Because of cod, [Iceland] had moved in one generation from a fifteenth-century colonial society to a modern postwar nation” (2).

A law from the 1800s gave Iceland control of its waters to four miles from the nation’s coastline, but foreign trawlers could freely operate outside of this zone. Although Iceland had been gaining an increasing level of autonomy, the country was, up until the Second World War, still in a political union with Denmark, with the Danish government remaining responsible for Iceland’s foreign and defence policies. This meant that Iceland could not take the unilateral decision to take control of its own waters, and had to watch as trawlers from West Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain all took vast catches from just a few miles from Iceland’s coast (2). But, of all the European nations, it was the British fishing industry that relied most heavily on accessing Iceland’s waters.

Icelandic Coat of Arms
Icelandic Coat of Arms. Iceland became fully independent from Denmark in 1944, allowing the nation to regain control of its foreign and defence policy and expand its EEZ, leading to the outbreak of the first Cod War.

Iceland’s inability to pass its own laws and regulations ended when the nation was granted full independence from Denmark in 1944. Throughout the 1950s Iceland watched as foreign trawlers continued to take huge catches of cod, with British and West German trawlers taking as many fish as the entire Icelandic fishing industry (3). Under this immense fishing pressure, the number of cod and whitefish in Icelandic waters slowly but steadily began to decline. In 1958, Iceland decided to take action, extending its exclusive economic zone from four to twelve miles, effectively banning foreign trawlers from operating in this area (2). The European nations that had previously fished these waters reacted with anger but ultimately accepted the implementation of the new zone. But Britain, suffering from depleted fish stocks closer to home in the North Sea, relied too heavily on Icelandic cod to simply give up on Icelandic waters and continued to fish within the twelve-mile limit, sparking the first Cod War.

The First Cod War

Iceland’s twelve-mile zone came into force at the end of August 1958. Lacking a fully-fledged navy,  Iceland used the seven vessels that made up its coast guard to protect the newly established zone. When it became clear that Iceland would attempt to board any British fishing boats found in the zone and arrest the crews, the UK government sent Royal Navy frigates to protect their trawlers. At the peak of the first Cod War, thirty-seven British warships were present in Icelandic waters, along with a number of resupply and refuelling vessels from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. One of the most serious incidents of the first Cod War saw an Icelandic patrol boat Thor fire blank and then live warning shots at a British trawler which had failed to stop when instructed to by the crew of the Icelandic vessel (3). The Blackwood-class frigate HMS Russell came to the aid of the trawler and there was a stand-off between the British and Icelandic vessels as both faced each other with their guns manned (5). Eventually, the Thor retreated when further Royal Navy frigates appeared on the scene (3). The first Cod War lasted for three years, but actual clashes, such as the one between Thor and HMS Russel, were relatively rare. This was because the Royal Navy frigates worked in defensive boxes to block off Icelandic patrol boats and prevent them from reaching British trawlers, leaving the Icelanders no way of intercepting the British boats to arrest the crews. This was an effective way of protecting the trawlers but came at the cost of fishing efficiency being severely reduced (2).

British Trawler Coventry City
British Trawler Coventry City passes an Icelandic Patrol Boat off Westfjords, off the west coast of Iceland at the outbreak of the first Cod War in 1958.

In 1961 Iceland, tiring of the ongoing Cod War and its ineffectiveness at stopping British fishing, looked to apply political pressure on Britain. Iceland was an important member of NATO, with its location relatively close to the Soviet Union and its willingness to host US military bases (due to a US/Iceland defence treaty signed in 1951 (4)) making its continued membership of the organisation highly important to the alliance. Iceland, therefore, had significant leverage against Britain when it suggested that it could withdraw from NATO if Britain did not back down. This, combined with the ongoing cost of keeping multiple warships and thousands of sailors in Iceland’s waters, led to the British government accepting Iceland’s new twelve-mile zone, although a deal was agreed which allowed a number of British fishing boats to continue to operate in certain parts of the zone for a period of three years. With that, the first Cod War was over, with Iceland the victor.

The Second Cod War

Net Cutter
Diagram of a net cutter in action.

Icelandic fisheries scientists calculated that cod stocks in the nation’s waters were continuing to decline despite the imposition of the twelve-mile limit. By the early 1970s they believed that in order to restore stocks the zone would have to be extended, this time to fifty miles. This was implemented this in September 1972 (2). Again Britain, along with West Germany, ignored the new zone and continued to fish within it, leading Iceland to send its coast guard, which had been strengthened with several new vessels, to confront the British trawlers. The British government did not want to inflame the situation and therefore held back from sending Royal Navy vessels and instead sent large, fast tugboats to protect the trawlers. The Icelanders, however, had a new weapon in this Cod War – net cutters. These were devices that could be towed behind a coast guard vessel and would sever the nets of any trawlers they came into contact with, causing the net, which was worth several thousand pounds, and the catch within it, to fall to the bottom of the sea (2).

As the Icelandic coast guard could actively cut the trawl nets of British trawlers, the second Cod War was much more violent than the first. Icelandic vessels successfully severed the nets of sixty-nine British and fifteen West German trawlers (2) and crew members were often injured when they were struck by wires and ropes springing across their trawlers after their nets were cut. The main method of defending against attempted trawl cutting was for the British trawlers, tug boats and Royal Navy vessels to ram the coast guard boats, with the Icelandic boats responding by ramming the British boats if their attempts to cut nets were unsuccessful.

The Icelandic vessels would not only try to cut nets but would also attempt to detain British trawlers and arrest the crews, leading to a number of dangerous confrontations. The British trawler Everton was hit by live ammunition after it refused to stop when challenged by the coast guard vessel Aegir. The Everton was severely damaged but was able to reach a Royal Navy frigate, at which point the Aegir stopped its pursuit. In another incident, the Aegir collided with the Leander-class frigate HMS Scylla (6), which resulted in a serious injury to an Icelandic sailor, with some reports stating that this later resulted in the sailor’s death.

HMS Scylla and Odinn
HMS Scylla and the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel Odinn collide in the second Cod War.

Britain was put under increasing pressure to accept Iceland’s demands by NATO and the US government, and the stakes were raised considerably when Iceland suggested again that it may leave NATO and ban the British and US military from its territory if its new fifty-mile zone was not recognised. With the Cold War now being at its height, and NATO forces relying on bases in Iceland to track Soviet submarines moving through the GIUK gap, Britain came under immense pressure to accept the new zone and withdraw from Icelandic waters. After fourteen months of conflict, the second Cod War finally came to an end in September 1973 when Britain agreed to Iceland’s demands, but a deal was made to allow British trawlers to continue to fish in the new fifty-mile zone for two years, although their annual catch would be limited to 130,000 tons per annum.

GIUK Gap
GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap was a strategically important choke point which Soviet submarines had to pass through to reach the North Atlantic Ocean and US territorial waters.

Between the second and third Cod Wars, when the two-year agreement was still in place, a further serious incident took place. The trawler C.S. Forester, one of the largest vessels in the British commercial fleet, was spotted fishing within twelve miles of the Icelandic coast by the patrol boat Thor. The C.S. Forester was pursued for over one hundred miles and then shelled with non-explosive ammunition by the Thor. At least two shells hit causing damage to the ship. The C.S. Forester eventually stopped and was boarded and towed to an Icelandic port where it was impounded and the skipped was jailed for thirty days. He was eventually released when the C.S. Forester’s owners paid a £2,300 fine and a further £26,500 for the release of the trawler.

The Third, and Final, Cod War

As soon as this agreement ended, the third Cod War began in July 1975 when Iceland announced it would be extending its exclusive economic zone to 200 miles from its coastline. While the political momentum was moving towards countries having larger EEZs – Canada was at the same time pushing for a 100-mile zone – international consensus and the regulations that would make this a legal reality were still some time away from being in place. Furthermore, at 200 miles Iceland was extending its zone to the extreme limits of what was considered acceptable under international law. Britain, of course, refused to recognise the new zone and so the third Cod War began. This Cod War was also short but featured some of the most serious and violent confrontations between Icelandic and British vessels of all of the Cod Wars.

One of the most contentious episodes involved the Icelandic patrol boat Thor and two British trawlers and a support ship. British and Icelandic accounts differ about exactly what happened, but what is clear is that Thor was rammed by British vessels to the extent that it began to sink and in an attempt to defend itself fired blank, and then live ammunition at the British ships. Some of the live rounds struck a British trawler, the Star Aquarius although no injuries and only minor damage resulted.

Another incident took place when another Iceland patrol boat, the Týr, tried to cut the nets of a British trawler. HMS Falmouth, a Rothesay-class frigate intervened to protect the trawler, ramming into the Týr. The Icelandic vessel made a second, this time successful attempt to cut the trawler’s nets which led to HMS Falmouth ramming the Týr a second time, nearly capsizing the Icelandic vessel. The captain of the Týr ordered his men to man the ship’s guns. A stand-off developed between the two ships which only ended when the crew of the Týr realised that their vessel had been so severely damaged by the second ramming that it was at risk of sinking and they needed to immediately return to port. In total, there were fifty-five incidents of Royal Navy vessels ramming Icelandic boats during the third Cod War.

USS Tacoma
USS Tacoma, an example of an Asheville-class gunboat of the type Iceland claimed to want to purchase of lease from the USA.

Neither nation showed any signs of backing down. Britain diverted considerable naval resources to fighting the Cod Wars at a high financial cost to the UK government. Furthermore, many Royal Navy frigates and Royal Fleet Auxiliary support and refuelling ships were sent to Icelandic waters when they were in high demand elsewhere to deter the Soviet threat, as the Cold War was at its peak during the third Cod War. While Iceland used its small (in comparison to the Royal Navy) coast guard vessels as best it could, the Icelandic government attempted to upgrade the nation’s naval power by buying or leasing Asheville-class gunboats from the US. When this request was turned down they reportedly attempted to purchase Mirka-class frigates from the Soviet Union – an extremely controversial move from a country which was a member of NATO. While both attempts at procuring such vessels for Iceland may have been a ploy that they would never have carried out, it did underline Iceland’s determination to keep on fighting and showed that they were not afraid to take on the Royal Navy head-on.

Talks between Britain and Iceland, mediated by NATO, took place in early 1976 to try and resolve the third Cod War. As these talks were taking place the Icelandic government again turned to political means to increase the pressure on Britain, first by officially cutting off diplomatic relations with the UK and then by threatening to close a major NATO base. This base, on Reykjanes peninsula, near the town of Keflavík in western Iceland, housed the US 85th Air Group, radar stations and anti-submarine warfare units as well as serving as a base for US search and rescue teams. Again the GIUK gap came into play, as without this base America and the NATO alliance would be unable to monitor and track Soviet submarines as they passed through the area, leaving them blind to Soviet activity in the North Atlantic and losing the deterrent of having NATO forces amassed relatively close to the USSR.

Iceland EEZ
Diagram showing the scale of Iceland’s expansion of its EEZ from 1958 onwards.

Under pressure from the US government and the rest of NATO, Once again Britain had little option other than to accept Icelandic demands and accept the new 200-mile EEZ. In a minor concession to the UK, a small number of British trawlers were able to remain in the zone for a limited time and catch up to 50,000 tons of cod, but once this agreement ended the British government accepted that its fishing fleets had no right to fish within 200 miles of the Icelandic coastline.

Impact of the Cod Wars

After the third Cod War, the 200-mile exclusive economic zone became the international norm, with all nations able to control activities that exploit marine resources within this zone. The move towards this was already gaining momentum during all three of the Cod Wars, meaning Britain was in many ways fighting a losing battle by trying to continue fishing in Icelandic waters. In 1982 the 200-mile EEZ was officially confirmed in international law in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international legal framework that covered marine activities.

Iceland was highly motivated to fight the Cod Wars as cod (and other whitefish) were the only major economic resource they had. Cod had allowed the country to go from being based around subsistence fishing to a highly developed, wealthy Western European nation in just one generation. As Mark Kurlansky writes: “When Icelanders see cod stocks diminishing, they think about returning to the Middle Ages – earthen huts, metal shacks” (2). This meant that Iceland would do anything it took to protect their fish stocks from foreign trawlers and expand the area of the sea they alone controlled to the maximum permitted under international law.

Grimsby Docks
Derelict docks at Grimsby. Many British ports declined once Britain could no longer access Icelandic waters.

The UK fishing industry was decimated by the loss of Icelandic cod. Even with catches from Icelandic waters, the industry had been in decline throughout the second half of the twentieth century, but this accelerated after the Cod Wars. Fishermen across the UK were laid off and trawlers decommissioned, with the North Sea ports of Hull and Grimsby being hardest hit. Furthermore, many people in shore-based fish processing plants and those employed in the wider fishing supply and logistics chains also lost their jobs. A scheme to compensate fishermen for the loss of their livelihoods was heavily criticised for being poorly designed and paying out insufficient compensation. It was not until 2010, and campaigning from politicians such as Hull West MP Alan Johnson and Great Grimsby MP Austin Mitchell, that the final payments were made, and many fishermen still believed that they were not given the full amount of compensation they were entitled to.

On the other hand, Iceland has continued to prosper through carefully managing its fisheries. When cod stocks have dipped – such as in the early 1990s when scientists miscalculated the total spawning stock – quotas have been cut to allow cod numbers to recover. In this way, the Icelandic fishing industry is, unlike most other European nations, willing to accept a short-term reduction in profits to ensure the long-term sustainability of its fish stocks (7).

Today Iceland remains steadfastly outside of the European Union, meaning that it is not signed up to the Common Fisheries Policy and maintains full control of its own fisheries. As of the early 2020s fishing accounts for 40 per cent of Iceland’s export earnings and employs 7 per cent of the nation’s workforce (8). As Gunnar Tomasson, the director of Thorfish, one of Iceland’s largest fishing companies told the BBC:

“Today the fishing stocks are sustainable and we are controlling them very well. But inside the European Union, it is totally the other way around. They are not controlling it; they are overfishing their stocks and they are even paying subsidies to their industry. We do not want to go into the European Union” (9).

Arctic Corsair
A modern photograph of the Arctic Corsair.

There have been a number of memorials to the Cod Wars, such as the twin statues Voyage – both face each other from their locations in Hull and the other in the town of Vik in southern Iceland. In 2017 former fishermen and civic leaders from Hull visited Iceland and took part in a ceremony to commemorate the end of the Cod Wars. The bells of the British trawler Arctic Corsair and the Icelandic vessel Odinn – which had come into conflict and rammed each other in the third Cod War – were swapped as a mark of respect and friendship between the two nations.

References

1. Jonsson, S. (1983) The Icelandic fisheries in the pre-mechanization Era, C. 1800–1905: Spatial and economic implications of growth, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 31:2, 132-15.
2. Kurlansky, M. (1997), Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Vintage Publishing.
3. Roberts, C. (2007), The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing, Gaia Publishing.
4. US Department of State, US Relations with Iceland, December 3, 2020.
5. Royal Naval Association Community Site, First Cod War, February 15, 2012.
6. Roberts, J. (2009) Safeguarding the Nation: The Story of the Modern Royal Navy, Seaforth Publishing.
7. Clover, C. (2004), The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat, Ebury Press.
8. CIA World Factbook, Explore All Countries – Iceland, 2021 edition.
9. BBC News, Iceland’s Fishing Industry ‘Better Off Outside’ EU, 21 June 2016.

Note: This article was originally written in 2012 and was revised in 2023.