Naval Mines

Seven Spades

Seven Spades

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Apparently about 150,000 Naval mines were laid in our waters during the second world war. What happened after the end of the war were restrictions on leisure boating removed straight away? Did they publish charts of the locations of mines and how long was it before all the mines were removed?
 
Dunno, but my edition of Heavy Weather Sailing includes a passage across Lyme Bay just after the end of the war, complicated by the fact that the buoyage had been removed and not yet put back.

Pete
 
When I served on a minesweeper we were still getting the odd one off the south coast, that was in the 80s, the old horn types, got a picture somewhere of us blowing one up.
 
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Back in the 70's we were coming to the end of the NEMEDRI routing system. A set of known swept routes clear for navigation and anchoring. Outside these areas there were no guarantees. About mid 70's they went over to using all areas and only a few places were considered dangerous for anchoring, Dunkirk being one of them.

IIRC NEMEDRI stands for Northern Europe and Mediterranean Routing Instructions.
 
As has already been mentioned the safe routes through the minefields of both sides were freely available on charts. Under one of the Geneva conventions all sea mines are supposed to de-activate after a set period though some combatants have omitted this feature.

Nato ran an extensive programme to remove these minefields which the RN contributed to extensively. I as an RNR stoker almost spent 2 weeks sweeping German mines in the Baltic, but managed to go to Gibraltar instead.
 
I believe the short canal in southwest Sweden was built so that Swedish shipping didn't have to be exposed to Baltic mines. It is still a useful short cut for yachtsmen.

It wasn't only the waters that were mined. In my childhood, many Cornish beaches were closed off, especially those with dunes, and I imagine it was the same across Southern Britain.
 
Seven Spades said:
So did NEMEDRI include British waters and were the NEMDRI routes marked on old charts?
Click to expand...

IIRC The 'Q' Routes were listed with the termination points and way points plus the lane widths in a book which we kept up to date along with the other chart corrections. This was all in the public domain. Some of the older charts had a similar marking showing the lanes in magenta. A similar system was in practice in the northern Arabian gulf after the first Gulf War up to 2003 where the charts had magenta coloured areas suggesting you may wish to follow an alternative route:-)

So in summary; "yes" and "yes".
 
The strait between Corfu and Albania is still shown as mined on the Albanian side in the Navonics chart. The legend that goes with the marking is 'The area reported in this chart is dangerous because of a former mined area. Vessels should only navigate during daylight and follow the recommended tracks shown on the chart.'
The mine symbol used is a magenta circle with two horns in the upper quadrant.
 
duncan99210 said:
The strait between Corfu and Albania is still shown as mined on the Albanian side in the Navonics chart. The legend that goes with the marking is 'The area reported in this chart is dangerous because of a former mined area. Vessels should only navigate during daylight and follow the recommended tracks shown on the chart.'
The mine symbol used is a magenta circle with two horns in the upper quadrant.
Click to expand...

After the Albanians fired on 2 RN destroyers no one was tha keen on sweeping any mines on the Albanian side
 
The pipe mines laid at HMS Dolphin (now Fort Blockhouse) to the left side of the Portsmouth Harbour Entrance were only removed in 2005-6. I had my boat moored there at the time and we were given a choice to move it, or accept the consequence if one went off.
 
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