Talk:North Sea/Archive 1

German(ic) Ocean/Sea
A quick check of the Oxford English Dictionary shows that North Sea was in use by the 13th century, and in common use in the 18th. German Sea and German Ocean were in play, but were never the exclusive English term simply displaced by war-fervor. The usages in the OED implies that "German Ocean" is more a learned term (as a translation of Ptolemy's Germanikos Okeanos) and that "North Sea" may be more common, but I may be misreding the usages. --MichaelTinkler


 * I agree. I started to write a long list of supporting evidence, then found this article which sums it up nicely. In reality the North Sea had not been called the German Sea or German Ocean in everyday English speech for centuries prior to World War I. One question which remains is whether there was an archaic "official" name that was changed to reflect the ordinary name during the War. However, the first body providing "official" British usage for place names outside the United Kingdom proper was the PCGN, which was not founded until 1919. Thus, the claim appears to be an urban legend. I'll leave the claim for a day or so to see if anyone can come up with supporting evidence, then remove it. --Roger 13:40, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * Several Google hits for "Germanic Sea" but none illustrating usage in the 20th Century and many noting that it is out-of-date. Jieagles 16:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

If the Kattegat is a bay of the North Sea, and Sweden borders on the Kattegat, then why doesn't Sweden border on the North Sea?--user:Branko

- From a Danish/Swedish point of view, it is doubtful whether the Kattegat is a part of the North Sea. But the precise delimination of the Northern waters is controversial. S.

The German Hydrographic Service used to define the Kattegat as part of the "waters between North Sea and Baltic Sea" (along with Sound & Belts and maybe even Kiel bay). I am not sure whether this terminology is still used. Kosebamse 11:03 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

Need help with reference article
This is a nice overview article about the geography and hydrography of the North Sea, apparently published by OSPAR Commission. It presents as "Chapter 2" but I was unable to find other parts of that publication. Any ideas? Kosebamse 04:08, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * The last digit of the address is the number of the chapter. Try this for the introduction. (RJP 20:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC))

Headline text
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Hello - can someone explain what the above piece of text under "Headline Text" is for? IanB 12:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, speaking both German and English I may be able to enlighten everyone as to what use the above list may be. When referencing German words(other non-English languages also) it requires a lot of diacritic marks. To open a character map page or searching for an ASCII number every time is tedious, thus the list above allows for a quick copy and paste when a specific character is required. I may be wrong, but it seems quite useful to me. Pmi25 05:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Bad Description
MSN Encarta gives a better image and description:

http://encarta.msn.com/map_701515192/North_Sea.html

Expand notice
This is a major body of water, so I've nominated it for Version 0.5, but the article is very brief. Could someone try to add some content? Compare Baltic Sea. Thanks, Walkerma 04:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Could I suggest the history section should reflect its importance in WW1 and WW2? Should there be a section on shipwrecks (including archaeology), of which the UK coastline alone has many tens of thousands. The Baltic Sea section on Geography is excellent ..but less applicable here as the boundaries can't be rigourously defined. In the absence of a geography section, could the introduction cover sea temperatures, significant wave height, icing etc? JRPG 12:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Other north seas
Are there any other bodies of water known as 'north sea' or some translation thereof? If so, even if they're not internationally-recognised names, it might be worth linking to them, to help reduce systemic bias. (Not that I know of any myself, but it's the kind of generic name that must surely be found all over the place...) Chris Thornett 16:24, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Not that google comes up with - to date no disambiguation is needed.  SriMesh |  talk  05:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

map
that map's really bad. the link to the encarta thing that other guy posted has a wonderful map.

Expand
Does any German speaking person intend to fulfill the translation request anytime soon? I wish I could do it. But I was thinking of just using some English reference material that we can find on our own to expand this article. I might propose a list of good sources and then anyone else interested in the article is welcome to work with me. ΞΞΞ 18:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

yes i am working on translating this article from the German along with Island Kayaker. Jieagles 00:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Could someone have a look at the non-English word 'Kontors'. Its translation is office which seems inappropriate for the context. Would outpost be better? JRPG 12:26, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Kontor has an article in English wikipedia. i have now fixed the link. Jieagles 19:02, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

History Section
i think the history section is a prime candidate for summarization to reduce the size of the article. it has already been split off into its own article and it is very long and includes several very detailed parts. (possible 3 sections: "Early history"=romans and vikings, "Northern Europe's commercial highway" or something to do with commerce and trade=Hanseatic league, the Netherlands, and Britain, "20th Century"=the rest. Thoughts? if no one beats me to it ill post a link to a draft here. Jieagles 02:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Re the history section, I certainly felt uncomfortable with it but WW1 is now perhaps too short! The sinking of 3 old cruisers by U9 was the startling first proof of what submarines -which almost caused British surrender in 1917 -could do. It was taught in Naval staff colleges and should be mentioned.

The article should also say that the Grand fleet moved to Scapa to effect a distant blockade.

"Britain strove to maintain the blockade and, if possible, to damage the German fleet enough that British ships could be used elsewhere." Where else could the fleet be used? The Baltic was too dangerous. The men could certainly be used but this isn't what is said. Scheer's stated aim before Jutland was to lure out part of the fleet to destroy it and thus weaken the rest.

Surely Jutland, the largest ever naval battle requires a mention.

JRPG 22:25, 30 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Please make these changes to the History of the North Sea page and feel free to add it here but i really am gonna try to get around to summarizing this section sometime soon so individual facts might not be around very long, but im certainly not an expert so the more info ive got the better summary ill be able to make. Jieagles 00:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jieagles. Edit to the History of the North Sea WW1 is done, the wording I hope more concise. The talk edit was done at night -sorry if it sounded a little tetchy! There seems to be duplicated items on North Sea history which would benefit from merging. JRPG 21:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Ive begun summarizing the section. It can be found here; feel free to have a go. User:Jieagles/North Sea History Jieagles 15:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Units and spelling
I believe i have fixed all the units so that they appear initially in metric and then parenthetically in US exceptions being a couple of times where source material was US (eg. 100ft boats).

i also though it would be better to use abbreviations for source units mainly due to spelling discrepancies throughout the article (meter/metre) and the unusually large number of times that these units appear make it unnecessary to repeat every time. (See Manual of Style (dates and numbers) this seems to be a reasonable exception as defined there.)

I also changed all (i hope) the spelling problems to American spelling because i was going through already and my browser has a AE spell check so it was easier for me to do it this way simply to attain uniformity. If someone wants to change it all to BE, the content makes that reasonable though not necessary. Jieagles 15:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Introduction
I have made a sandbox page to play with introduction. User:SriMesh/Sandbox/NorthSeaIntro Under the paragraphs there is a discussion - table of contents to introduce, concepts from WP lead 1. Context 2. Characterization 4. Compare and contrast 5. Criticism, and peeked in at wikiproject lakes and rivers to try to give me an outline for the lead to consider. The whole article has been introduced by four paragraphs for an introduction. I alleviated some concerns on the North Sea talk page, and put the other names of the North Sea in to the second paragraph, and took out the technical terms from the very first paragraph. What do you think of the paragraphs above ******---***---*** at User:SriMesh/Sandbox/NorthSeaIntro  They could be further copy edited I am sure, but it provides a starting point to summarize the article or the entire table of contents into the introduction. SriMesh | talk  05:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Leading paragraph
So, as the talk page notes in several discussions above, the lede for this article is tricky because there is so much information and it is difficult to summarize concisely. I have just significantly rewritten/reorganized the lede because i thought it it did not read very smoothly; it was more like a list of facts than a summary. Furthermore, there aren't any body of water featured articles or any real templates I could find to base this off of. I have tried as far as possible to make these changes in accordance with WP:LEAD. It states that an article of this size should generally have a lede of about 4 paragraphs and focus on aspects in proportion to their importance. I arranged it thus:
 * 1) What, where, and how big?  for a geographical article i think these are the most important items.
 * 2) why is this notable now? most people are probably more interested in what's going on now than working up through history.  this wound up being basically summary of the economy since it's geopolitical importance has waned.
 * 3) History.  I thought the flow of "it's important now because... Historically, however..." was smoother than splitting it up.
 * 4) Geology, geography, and environment. These items have less to do with the notability of the sea and are more just general facts about it.  The fjords are kind of notable since the best examples are on the north sea but the economy and history are, it seems to me, the reason more people will be coming to this article. (this is certainly a judgment call; I am open to arguments the other way.  But I couldn't really think of any myself.)

I tried to remove any facts that might want citation. I also tried generally to remove any specific facts in favor of a very general overview. Any given fact in a summary takes you on that slippery slope of 'if we include this we have to include that.' Also broad characterizations make for smoother reading than lists of facts.

Anyway I figured, since the lede has been through several iterations I'd try to get a general outline for people to agree on in here so that we can avoid complete rewritings as much as possible, but I welcome any comments to this framework or edits. --InspectorTiger (talk) 21:00, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

France
It would appear that France is one of the littoral countries of the North Sea but it is not included in the first sentence.Eregli bob (talk) 15:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but only just. Mentioning it may imply that all of France's coast is on the North Sea, whereas it is actually only a very small part. Bazonka (talk) 17:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

 '''If we have to mention France and the North Sea (sorry, but it just isn't a Northsea nation for me) then maybe the geopolitics behind it, and also explain away how places like Deal and Margate are considered lying on the English channel even though they lie somewhat to the north of northernmost (North Sea lying) bit of France. ''' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.215.210.155 (talk) 13:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * About 45km of France's coast is on the North Sea, and Deal and Margate are definitely not on the English Channel. Who says that they are? Bazonka (talk) 17:50, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Maps less than satisfactory?
With regard to the map currently sitting in the 'economy' section, it would be useful to know what the black line running through various countries is - I'm presuming it's the drainage divide. If confirmed we should label it though perhaps for the purposes of the section one without that adornment might suffice. The drainga ebasin is dealt with elsewhere.

As regards the 'geology' section, I'm not convinced the existing map is helpful or relevant as the map covers much of Europe, N Africa and the Middle East and the N Sea is in one small corner.

Can anyone improve the article on either count? - my own abilities with images on WP are limited! cheers 11:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geopersona (talk • contribs) 11:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

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German Sea
Historically was it called the German Sea. Like the "Irish Sea". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.224.32.142 (talk) 13:44, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This is already mentioned in the article. Bazonka (talk) 22:41, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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North Sea didn't protect Britain from invasion until the Romans
The article now states that "The British Isles had been protected from invasion by the North Sea waters until the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 CE". That's nonsense of course. There have been numerous invasions into Britain before those time, the latest before the Romans were by some Belgic tribes just 1 or 2 centuries earlier. Another major invasion that we now know of, is the one by the Beaker people. JRB-Europe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Discrepancy
The size of the sea differs significantly between the opening paragraph and the Geography section. I'm virtually sure the former is wrong, as the island of Britain alone is 80,000 square miles. Samer (talk) 17:50, 20 March 2019 (UTC)