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
Romanian Black Sea Fleet during World War I machine guns. The minelayer "Alexandru cel Bun" was armed with two 37 mm guns and two machine guns, in addition to her load of mines. The main Romanian port of Constanța was leased to a Russian naval squadron, headed by the battleship "Rostislav". This, combined with the fall of the port to the Central Powers during the Second Battle of Cobadin, rendered the small Northern port of Sulina as the base for the Romanian Black Sea Fleet. On 13 November 1916, the German minelaying submarine "UC-15" set off to lay mines off Sulina. However, she only managed to lay two