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
Harold Innis and the cod fishery method of curing their catches onshore, then transporting the dried fish to Mediterranean countries where there was a demand for a higher protein diet. This combined with consumer preferences for dried fish over cod packed in brine meant higher prices, especially in Catholic countries where the church required the regular consumption of fish. Thus, dried cod sold in Spain allowed England to receive substantial amounts of the precious metals that the Spanish were bringing from their colonies in the New World. "Cod from Newfoundland was the lever by which she [England] wrested her share of the riches of the New