An Exceptional Mortality: Dumped Munitions, Inconclusive Science, and the Mass Death of Oysters in the Thames Estuary after the First World War

Abstract

When the First World War ended in November 1918, the British military was overwhelmed by logistical problems involving the disposal of leftover munitions piling up across the Western Front. To expedite disarmament, the British started dumping all manner of bombs, bullets, and chemical weapons into the seas surrounding Europe. On the surface, dumping appeared to be a miracle solution, but serious questions and concerns were raised almost immediately by bureaucrats, fishermen, scientists, and military officers, who debated its merits and limitations without a full grasp of the environmental, economic, and health implications. This debate was particularly well documented in Britain, where operations coincided with a sudden and unprecedented die-off of oysters in the Thames Estuary in 1920 and 1921. Oyster merchants blamed dumped munitions for the die off, but political and military officials remained skeptical. To resolve the issue, stakeholders turned to science, but the subsequent investigations into the mortality's cause failed to provide definitive answers. This article examines the immense ecological and logistical implications of demobilization and the ways in which inconclusive science shaped events. It argues that demobilization and disarmament have troubling environmental histories, tied to the contamination generated by ordnance destruction and the ways in which government and military officials defined acceptable risks and controlled disposal. In the end, they used dilution to elide the uncertainty and normalize dumping operations, thereby setting precedents that shaped institutional memories about the consequences throughout the twentieth century.