Treaty Ports (Ireland)
Following the establishment of the Irish Free State, three deep water Treaty Ports at Berehaven, Queenstown (modern Cobh) and Lough Swilly were retained by the United Kingdom in accordance with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921. Formerly, when the Free State was a part of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Royal Navy had designated its Ireland Station as a long-standing separate command.
The main reason for the retention of the ports was the recent U-boat Campaign around Irish coasts in 1914-18, and a concern by the British government that it might re-occur. As a part of the overall Anglo-Irish settlement it was envisaged that all other Royal Navy, British Army and RAF personnel and equipment were to evacuate the Free State.
As part of the resolution of the Anglo-Irish Trade War in the 1930s, the ports were returned to Ireland (the Free State's successor) in 1938 following agreements reached between the British and Irish Governments.
Read more about Treaty Ports (Ireland): Background, Agreement On Return of Treaty Ports, Spike Island Handover (11 July 1938), Berehaven Handover (30 September 1938), Lough Swilly Handover (3 October 1938), Winston Churchill's Reaction, Early Proposal of De Valera Re Ports
Famous quotes containing the words treaty and/or ports:
“The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)