Updated: 6 May 2021, 11:17
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FRENCH fishermen have vowed a new Battle of Trafalgar as a man in a soldier s uniform was seen firing a musket towards the blockade around Jersey.
The row over fishing rights between Britain and France has ramped up as two Royal Navy gunboats were deployed and a French navy vessel speeds towards the Channel Islands.
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The musket fired in a puff of smoke in a bizarre stunt amid the row
Claude La Vaullée, a Norman skipper who has fished off Jersey for 40 years, told Ouest France that he and other fishermen had equipped their vessels to re-stage the Battle of Trafalgar .
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Sputnik International
Oliver Harvey, Chief Feature Writer
St Helier, Jersey
Updated: May 7 2021, 0:26 ET
Oliver Harvey, Chief Feature Writer
St Helier, Jersey
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APPEARING out of the gloom soon after 4.30am, the armada of French fishing boats was ready “to restage Trafalgar”.
Shadowing them was the might of Britain’s Royal Navy HMS Tamar and HMS Severn primed with cannon and machine guns.
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A member of the Jersey Militia re-enactment group appeared on the ramparts of St Helier’s 16th Century Elizabeth Castle
Then, at around 6am, the French made their move.
Amid swirling smoke from red flares and proudly flying the French tricolour, the ragtag 60-strong flotilla made for Jersey’s St Helier harbour and pluckily blockaded the port.
6 May 2021
French anger around the British reclaiming their territorial waters post-Brexit and the British response to it took a bizarre turn as a tricorn-wearing re-enactor was seen firing a flintlock musket as French fishermen prepared to blockade a British port.
Upwards of 60 French fishing boats and other craft had sailed to the Crown Dependency of Jersey, a largely self-governing island owned by the British crown but just 15 miles off the French coast. It is believed the ships were preparing to blockade the island’s main harbour, and London has dispatched two small Royal Navy warships to keep the peace.
A blockadewould not have been unusual behaviour for French fishermen, who by modern Western European standards are extremely militant and jealously guard their own interests, not infrequently with violence. Blockades of ports and ramming attacks on rivals are not unheard of with clashes frequently seeing maritime signalling flares used as improvised guns so that the Fre