History of the North Sea intense diplomatic crisis. The crisis was defused when Russia was defeated by the Japanese and agreed to pay compensation to the fishermen. During the First World War, Great Britain's Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow and Germany's Kaiserliche Marine faced each other across the North Sea. Due to its numerical advantage in dreadnoughts, the Grand Fleet obtained Naval superiority and was able to establish a sea blockade of Germany's coast. The goal of the blockade was to deny Germany access to maritime trade including war materials and to guarantee the undisturbed ferrying of British troops. Because of the strong defensive
Fleet in being Vladivostok on 10 August 1904. Vitgeft's exit from Port Arthur resulted in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, an excessively long-ranged gun duel that resulted in no capital warships being sunk on either side, but finally eliminated Port Arthur's "fleet in being", as its warships became dispersed to neutral ports (where they were interned), and the survivors were so heavily damaged that they were no longer serviceable. A later example is the stand-off between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet during World War I. Germany largely preferred to keep its fleet intact rather than taking the