The summer of 1812 was wet and cool, bringing some relief to the small staff of the Hydrographical Office on the often-stifling top floor of the Admiralty Building in Whitehall. Every space in the passageways was taken up by the boxes which they laboured to fill with charts destined for ships of the war-time Royal Navy deployed from the Baltic to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the East Indies to an unwelcome new theatre on the borders of the USA. On Thursday 1 July, during a lull in superintendence of this work, the Hydrographer returned to his desk to consider a letter and a manuscript survey, one of over 30 which were rendered from the fleet during the year.

Captain Thomas Hurd examined these eagerly as they were passed up by the clerks to the Board of Admiralty. It was generally a mixed bag. Many were swift reconnaissance surveys made in the heat of operations, sometimes recorded as a sketch in the remark books which captains and masters were required to render. They might supply a few soundings which could be dropped into smaller-scale published charts. This inspection was, however, the only opening for Hurd to spot talent for the vision which he would represent repeatedly to the Board and eventually bring to fruition: ‘ an establishment […] of officers and scientific young men […] capable of making nautical surveys in whatever part of the world their future services may happen to place them in’.

Hurd's vision had been shaped by his own experience in the front line. His reputation in the Admiralty had been made by a remarkable survey which enabled the creation of a naval base in the hazardous waters of the Bermudan archipelago. Consequently, he had been the immediate choice to undertake an examination of another complex of islets and rocks in the approaches to the French naval base of Brest following the loss of a 74-gun ship of the Royal Navy's Inshore Squadron in 1804.

When he came to reiterate his vision in 1814, he would stress ‘the great deficiency of our nautical knowledge in almost every part of the world, but more particularly on the coastline of our own Dominions’.

The coastal landscape of Alderney is dominated by the relics of its former strategic maritime prominence – a prominence based on British naval planning of the mid-Victorian period which would transform the island over a critically brief interval of thirty years in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it would be misleading to suggest that this was the first and last occasion on which the Channel Islands archipelago would find itself in the front line of international conflict.

Islands in the front line

The idea that the Channel Islands – as we now call them – would provide an advanced station for English and British warships and a base from which to observe and intercept enemy shipping, may be truly said to have originated as far back as the thirteenth century after King John's loss of Normandy, but more recently – during the War of American Independence – the British government would support modest plans to improve the coast defences of the islands, and build major works at Fort Regent in Jersey and Fort George in Guernsey. At this time, and following French commitment to develop the port of Cherbourg, more serious attention would be given to the provision of improved harbour facilities in the three principal islands in order to secure military support and naval protection in time of war. The threat from France was real and ever-present: for instance, an attack by a French squadron on Elizabeth Castle and a foiled coup de main in St Ouen's Bay, Jersey, in 1779; the attempt by three French privateers to seize Alderney in 1780, and the defeat of Baron de Rullecourt's forces at the Battle of Jersey after a successful landing in 1781.

Fears of imminent attacks on the Channel Islands during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were given renewed impetus after Napoleon's visit to Cherbourg in April 1803, relaunching Vauban's project of over a century earlier to create un port militaire, and appointing Joseph Cachin as Directeur des travaux maritimes. Writing to Lord Pelham, Lieutenant- Governor General Sir John Doyle urged: ‘Your Lordship knows we are the advanced posts and that the fate of these islands would have an influence upon publick opinion.’

The waters around the Channel Islands and the Gulf of Saint-Malo are known to be dangerous. Treacherous rocks that scatter the sea and strong tides produce rapid currents.

The weather is frequently difficult, and fogs are not unusual. The need for accurate charts drawn at an appropriate scale and precise nautical instructions appears then to be quite obvious. The French hydrographic service, known during the major part of the nineteenth century as the Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine before changing in 1886 to the Service hydrographique, made efforts to provide seamen with a collection of documents of great quality.

It is interesting to explore further the sequence of the different surveys and to replace them in their political and economic context whenever possible. It creates a rather contradictory image. The maritime activities whose prosperity was the final aim of these efforts were languishing during the nineteenth century. The harbours of the western coasts of Cotentin Peninsula and northern Brittany were lagging behind, unable to make the necessary investments in order to attract freight. Saint-Malo missed out on industrial development and never regained its former grandeur from the previous century. The port collapsed and did not even rank among the first twenty in France. Granville, despite some improvements and the construction of two wet docks in 1856 and 1873, never emerged and remained a fishing port. Few coasters exploited the sea routes between Cherbourg and the harbours of Brittany. Moreover, the trade that was mostly made up of agricultural products was in the hands of British shipowners and businessmen. They enjoyed preferential terms and prospered on the commercial relationships between France and the Channel Islands.

There were few shipowners in this area, and they concentrated mostly on high-sea fishing on the Grand Banks and in Iceland. This activity was more rewarding and attracted the major part of the available capital and able seamen. The port of Granville held 50 fishing boats, Saint-Malo nearly 70 and Saint- Brieuc 60 in 1866. The activity employed at that time almost 7,500 people. Coastal fishing was by comparison fruitless. Every year the statistics bulletin3 described the fishing practices as a routine and regretted that fishermen lacked a spirit of enterprise. With limited access to capital, they could only have small day boats and dredgers.

The phrase ‘fire no guns, shed no tears’ is part of the chorus from a song called ‘Barret's Privateers’, which tells the story of a man who signed up to be part of the crew of a British privateer called The Antelope during the American War of Independence. The protagonist of the song deems himself deceived by the promise that the crew would have to fire no guns and shed no tears and that American ships would simply surrender themselves to The Antelope as prizes. As a whole the song evokes a darkly romanticized version of eighteenth-century privateers as poor sailors duped into joining leaky old ships with bad-tempered captains. These privateers would then ply the seas with abandon looking for gold-laden prizes with the blessing and non-intervention of the British state. It is the second part of this romantic outlook on privateers that this chapter seeks to address. Far from being a benign overseer of legalised piracy, British wartime governments in the eighteenth century were deeply concerned about the effect that the actions of privateers could have on British maritime strategy. Privateering as a concept and as a reality was deeply embedded in British strategic thinking and in British diplomacy with neutral nations. Far from operating as a remote arm of the British wartime mercantile sector, privateers played a key role in the delicate negotiations over neutral rights. This was certainly the case during the first four years of the Seven Years War when Anglo-Dutch relations were focused on Dutch neutral rights and the taking of Dutch prizes by British privateers.

From a strategic perspective, the ideal role for privateers in the first few years of the Seven Years War was to destroy French seaborne trade without needlessly molesting or antagonizing neutral shipping. This ideal role was consistently complicated by two factors. Firstly, neutral nations like the Dutch Republic often carried French goods in their ships in order to profit from wartime relaxations of mercantilist-inspired trade restrictions. Secondly, privateers were hard to control at sea and often captured neutral vessels indiscriminately. Much political effort was therefore expended in trying to contain the political damage done by privateers and in trying to get neutral nations to both remain neutral and to stop carrying French trade.

When the idea for an international maritime history symposium in the Channel Islands was first mooted some twenty years ago, it received the enthusiastic support of the late Marc Michel. It was fitting, therefore, that he should live to see his dream realised in Alderney in September 2019, and that he should play such a prominent role in the organisation and recording of the event which proved to be such a popular and resounding success. All of this was made possible by the foresight and generosity of Mary Euler, who set up The Henry Euler Memorial Trust in commemoration of her husband, Henry Euler, a direct descendant of the celebrated Swiss mathematician, who had served as an RNVR torpedo officer in HMS Illustrious from her date of commission, through the Mediterranean campaign and including the raid on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

As the Trust's patron, His Excellency, the Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey, Vice Admiral Sir Ian Corder, KCB stated in his opening address at the 2019 Symposium that one of the Trust's principal objectives is ‘to inform, develop and maintain the interest of the inhabitants of Alderney and others in the maritime heritage of Alderney’. By placing Alderney in its Channel Islands’ setting, thence within the wider context of Anglo-French relations between 1689 and 1918, the Symposium enabled leading British and French historians to complement existing scholarship which has tended to treat the Islands as a place apart. Their strategic location was of immense importance in Anglo- French relations – the Islands shaped national strategies in war and peace, and strategy shaped the Islands in equal measure.

The Trustees have expressed their warm gratitude for the unreserved support received from Andrew Lambert and Jean de Préneuf in the organisation of the 2019 Symposium, and for the agreements reached with their respective academic institutions – King's College London, the Université de Lille and the Service Historique de la Défense, Paris. The close working relationship thus established, and the outstanding contributions of all those speakers who participated in the 2019 Symposium, have laid a solid foundation for future cooperation and research into the maritime history of Alderney and the Channel Islands throughout all periods of history.

In the mid-nineteenth century the complex relationship between Britain, France and the Channel Islands acquired a new urgency, as the British state launched a massive project to create an artificial harbour on the Island of Alderney, the lynchpin of a system of maritime security that would ensure the safety of British merchant shipping in wartime, countering the threat posed by the rapidly advancing naval base and fortified harbour at Cherbourg. In the event of war Braye Harbour would be critical to Britain's global system, the physical manifestation of a distinctive maritime culture and the strategic methods of a unique seapower state. Together with a second new harbour at Portland, 60 miles north, it would enable the Royal Navy to control the western entrance of the English Channel, isolating Cherbourg from the French naval bases on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This massive, costly project, the product of an era of heightened Anglo-French tension, exploited the latest engineering expertise to address the strategic problem of commanding the seas with short-ranged steam ships. But Braye was only the latest in a long line of developments that linked the Channel Islands into the British strategic system and, like those that had gone before, it changed the relationship between Britain, France and the Islands, and the Islands themselves. How should we understand the interlocking relationships between great powers and small islands, terrestrial identities and maritime realities? The conflicted history of Braye Harbour suggests an ambitious cultural reading could offer a way forward.

Early in 1862, as the British House of Commons prepared to decide whether to continue funding the massive naval harbour project at Braye, geologist, mining engineer and author David Thomas Ansted (1814−80) elevated a humdrum issue of expenditure and engineering onto an altogether higher plane. Ansted presented the harbour and fortress complex as the key to naval dominion, and a totem of national culture. His article ‘England's “Broad Stone of Honour”’ linked the great Prussian fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, looming over Coblenz at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, the key to the defence of Germany, with the new bastion that secured command of the English Channel: they were the representative bulwarks of their respective countries.

On 23 July 2019, the territorial waters of the Bailiwick of Guernsey (Guernsey, Alderney and Sark) were increased from 3 to 12 nautical miles (‘nm’). This unilateral decision taken by the Bailiwick of Guernsey1 came after the United Kingdom extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12nm in 1987, the Isle of Man in 1991 and Jersey in 1997. However, the maritime boundaries between the Bailiwick of Guernsey and France are still to be agreed. Indeed, the lines to the south-west and east of the Bailiwick were defined in the 1992 Schole Bank Agreement, but only for fishing purposes.

This decision is linked to the potential impact of Brexit on fishing for the Channel Islands, in order for the Bailiwick to be able to control and monitor fishing in its surrounding seas more efficiently than if they were not territorial waters. It does not only imply opening negotiations with France regarding the maritime boundaries between Normandy, Brittany and the Bailiwick, but also raises questions as to free navigation between the Islands of the Bailiwick, more particularly by French navy ships.

On Jersey's side, things are not necessarily simpler, but they were at least agreed between the Bailiwick of Jersey and France. In 2004, the Bay of Granville Treaty between France and the United Kingdom (4 July 2000) entered into force to:

• (i) define the maritime boundaries between Jersey and France, and

• (ii) set the fishing rights of French and Jersey (but also Guernsey …) fishermen.

It should be noted however that the treaty maintains a disconnection between territorial waters and the definition of fishing zones. The 2000 treaty is the latest in a long history of negotiations between Jersey and France regarding fishing rights in the Bay of Granville. It came back to the ‘oyster war’ that occurred at the beginning of the 19th century, which will be discussed later.

These two very recent examples show the complexity and fragmentation of the sea for economic and political reasons. It also demonstrates the complexity of dividing the sea in the Channel Islands area, given the particularities of the Islands’ status in international law.

Thirty kilometres off the Cotentin Peninsula, the Channel Islands are the closest British territory to the French coast. Because of this, and as also indicated by their compound French name − Les Îles Anglo-Normandes − they are an integral part of the history of the Channel as a ‘mer pour deux royaumes’ − a ‘sea shared by two kingdoms’ − the term coined by Renaud Morieux to describe this stretch of sea, now a border between France and Great Britain. For André Lespagnol, they ‘have been heavily involved for centuries in the everyday life of this part of the French Atlantic seaboard’. They have also long been a source of concern for the French navy. Island strongholds, they represent a threat to Cherbourg, the town whose dockyards were nevertheless chosen for the construction of a fleet intended to rival that of the Royal Navy.

But in the early years of the twentieth century, the Channel Islands’ geostrategic worth decreased significantly. For the British, worried by German sea power, the islands were losing their importance in favour of bases in the North Sea. For the French, the Entente Cordiale seemed to remove the danger of an attack from Britain. So, for both countries the Channel was a sea at peace in 1914. Should conflict break out and an alliance be formed between the two countries, it would even be a central part of their shared military strategy. Events proved them right, as the Channel quickly became both a hunting ground for German submarines and a lifeline for the Franco-British war effort. A closer look at the French navy, and at the Channel Islands during the First World War, can shed new light on relations between the two navies, specifically in respect of the protection of sea routes.

Since the in-depth studies of the 1920s, little research has been carried out into the role of the French navy during the First World War, particularly in the Channel, which has long been considered a secondary theatre of operations. That early work was very much of its time: mostly designed and undertaken by military institutions, navy-centred, nationalist in outlook, mostly in written form, and largely positivist and utilitarian in style. However, the centenary of the First World War has sparked renewed interest.

Reasons for ‘harbours of refuge’

Throughout the early 1800s, Britain feared the ‘Napoleonic threat’ of invasion. The more explicit threat from France abated with the defeat of Bonaparte's armies at Waterloo in 1815 and his death in 1821 on St Helena. But latent fears of a resurgence of French naval power in the mid-1800s, emphasised by the construction of the large harbour at Cherbourg, fuelled proposals in Britain for ‘harbours of refuge’ in the English Channel, debated at length through the 1840s. The perception of this new threat drove harbour construction at Portland, Jersey (St Catherine’s) and Alderney (Braye Bay), and later at Dover where work had already started. This paper will outline the history of these harbours/breakwaters, and the extent to which they failed or succeeded.

Harbours of refuge were notionally conceived to provide shelter from storms for commercial vessels, including mail packets, fishing and general trade. Use for naval purposes was sometimes less than explicit. Most of these harbours had difficult gestations, often with repeated shortages of money, particularly for Cherbourg. At the time of their design (∼1840) most naval vessels were powered by sail. Harbours and trading practices would have adapted to the restrictions so imposed. For instance, it was very difficult for a sailing vessel to leave harbour in the face of an onshore wind. This limitation was understood in commercial operations. But even as these harbours were being developed, the propulsion (and form) of vessels changed, with greater use of steam power rather than sail, and iron (later steel) replacing wooden hulls.

A partly hidden sub-text of the ‘harbours of refuge’ debate was, however, the development of new harbours for the Royal Navy for deterrence, ie. defence. A further sub-text, less commonly discussed, was their potential use for offensive purposes. For the Channel Islands, this would essentially be to blockade or stage attacks on the major French port at Cherbourg.

Possible sites in Britain for ‘harbours of refuge’ were at Holyhead, Peterhead, Harwich, Dover, Seaford, Portland, Jersey (St Catherine’s) and Alderney (Braye Bay). Both Jersey and Alderney are close to the coast of France, seen as the major military threat.

On 7 November 1739, the British declaration of war against Spain was solemnly proclaimed on Guernsey. War had long been expected and the Lieutenant Governor, John Graham, had already been pressing the government for support. He had some success, but this had not reassured the civil authorities. In early November the States ordered Peter Cary, deputy to the States, to explain their concerns to the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, the Duke of Newcastle. From their perspective, Guernsey was hemmed in between St Malo and Cherbourg, so close to the French coast that an invasion force embarked on barques and shallops could be on the island within a few hours. All male inhabitants between the ages of sixteen and sixty, which might amount to 2,000 men, were required to turn out for the militia, but about a third of these men were likely to be employed on privateers. There were only two weak companies of regulars on the island, old soldiers known as invalids, to provide a professional backbone. A proper defence would need at least a regiment and twenty-five field cannon to prevent a landing. However, even this would not be enough. According to Cary, ‘the natural defence of all the Islands’ was effective naval support. If part of the Channel squadron were stationed at Guernsey, which had a good and safe anchorage, it would protect the island from invasion; protect British commerce; destroy French commerce and drive away their privateers. Cary reminded Newcastle of the importance of the Channel Islands. In the last wars with France (1689−98, 1702−13) they had thirty to forty privateers continually cruising along the French coast. Guernsey privateers alone employed 1,700 men (50% of whom were English, Irish and Dutch seamen). They took 1,500 prizes, including many valuable ships. They disrupted French coastal trade, and even penetrated up their rivers. They went where deep-drafted men of war could not venture. They retook prizes from the French and returned them to their owners. They brought frequent and valuable intelligence gleaned from contacts ashore and captured French documents on prizes. For example, Cary claimed that in 1703 intercepted letters, taken on a recaptured English vessel, prevented the 200 ships of the Virginia convoy from falling into the hands of a French squadron that was cruising for them.