1830–1839
Independence and the closing of the Scheldt
No ship lost in action, and still the heaviest blow: Antwerp was cut off from the sea and stayed cut off for thirty years.
All conflicts › Independence and the closing of the Scheldt
No vessel from this period is yet in the database by name.
When Antwerp joined the Belgian revolt in October 1830, the Netherlands sent warships up the Scheldt to search every vessel for contraband. General Chassé, holding the citadel, bombarded the city on 27 October 1830. With navigation on the Scheldt under North-Netherlands control, Antwerp lost its free access to the North Sea, and William I maintained the blockade through the whole winter of 1830-31. The Dutch gunboat commander Jan van Speijk blew up his own vessel on 5 February 1831 rather than let it fall into Belgian hands.
The consequence for Belgian shipping was not a tally of ships sunk but a stranglehold. The 1839 Treaty of London guaranteed free navigation on the Scheldt but imposed a toll Belgium had to accept. That toll went on weighing until the country bought it off in a single payment in 1863 – the Scheldt Free! celebrations of that year, recorded in a painting held by the MAS. Nothing is known of Belgian-flag vessels sunk in action during these years, and that is not a gap in the sources: Belgium scarcely had a merchant navy of its own yet. As late as 1900 the fleet numbered seven sailing ships and seventy-three steamers, seventeenth in the world.
No Belgian merchant or fishing vessels from this conflict are known by name.
Where to find more
MAS Antwerp (the Scheldt Free! collection and the Visible Storage); Canon van Vlaanderen, “The Opening-Up of the Scheldt”; Oxford Public International Law, The Belgian Revolution and the Dissolution of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1830-1839).