Allied blockade in the Mid-East Atlantic during the First World War: cruisers against commerce-raiders

Abstract

This article examines the Allied blockade around the Canary Islands as a response to the German cruiser war, since the crossroads of trade routes from the South Atlantic that took place in the Canary Islands allowed the German commerce-raiders to ensure, on the one hand, the encounter with numerous enemy merchant ships, objectives of this economic war and, on the other hand, the aid of the numerous German merchant ships that were in their ports, especially as colliers. The immediate Allied action to block the ports in the Canary Islands took advantage of the undisputed hegemony of Great Britain in the archipelago: the British control of the main infrastructures and port and communication services was added by the joint diplomatic pressure of the British and French, although it was the clear superiority of the British naval forces and the vigilance of their cruisers that most contributed to limiting assistance to German commerce-raiders. Primary and secondary sources, diplomatic and military, both British and Spanish, and also French, shed light on the diplomatic and strategic dimension of a blockade in which the British Admiralty managed to end the threat of German commerce-raiders between August 1914 and March of 1915, and limit the operations of the following German auxiliary cruisers, which briefly operated in the eastern central Atlantic in the early months of 1916.