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Several Google hits for "Germanic Sea" but none illustrating usage in the 20th Century and many noting that it is out-of-date.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)

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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

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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.

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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)

Not that google comes up with - to date no disambiguation is needed. SriMesh | talk 05:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Citations

Does this article not need more citations? Antgel 02:26, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Since this date the article has recently been translated from a Feature Article in German wikipedia, as well as the article was nominated for Wikipedia:Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive and received a multitude of improvements. It is currently under peer review. Citations have been added and checked. 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 Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Unit symbols and abbreviations 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)