History of the North Sea great herring fishing industry resulting in Scotland becoming a European leader in that industry. During the First Schleswig War (1848–51), the Crimean War (1854–56) and the Second Schleswig War (1864), belligerents took steps to reduce or eliminate commerce in the North Sea by their enemies. In the first Schleswig War, Denmark was able to halt maritime commerce by Germany in the North Sea and in the second, imposed tolls on ships crossing through the Danish straits between the Baltic and North Seas. The Crimean War saw British and French expeditions sent into the Baltic to prevent Russian ships' egress into
Geology of the North Sea in the West, just North of the Netherlands. A larger graben is found in the subsurface below the Skagerrak, this north-south structure is called the Bamble-Oslo Graben. The Viking Graben is separated from the Faeroe Shetland Basin below the Atlantic by the Shetland Platform, the two structures join in the area north-east of the Shetland Islands. The area we now call the North Sea was interspersed amid several separate continental areas (Siberia, Baltica, Gondwana, and Laurentia) as well as the Iapetus Ocean and Tornquist Sea. Plate tectonics and continental collisions (orogenies) brought the features together of the North Sea that