History of the North Sea United Kingdom and Germany signed the Treaty of Heligoland. The Cod War of 1893 erupted between Denmark and Britain over fishing territories. Denmark declared a fishing territory of 13 nautical miles (24 km) around their shores which included Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Britain did not acknowledge this claim. Tensions in the North Sea were again heightened in 1904 by the Dogger Bank incident, in which Russian naval vessels mistook British fishing boats for Japanese ships and fired on them, and then upon each other. The incident, combined with Britain's alliance with Japan and the Russo-Japanese War led to an
Cod fisheries fishery off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland became hotly contested by the British and French, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The British used small boats close to shore, from which they caught the cod with hook and line. They practiced the "dry fishery" technique, which involved shore-based settlements for the drying of cod on flakes or racks placed in the open air for their subsequent transport back to Europe. The French on the other hand practiced the "green fishery", which involved processing the catch with salt aboard ship. At the same time a fleet of schooners fishing for cod,