Iceland’s Protectors Turn 100

While the Royal Danish Navy was tasked with policing and defending the far-flung colony of Iceland, and, generally, a station ship or patrol boat of some sort was on location since 1859, the locals knew the score. Denmark was 1,300 miles away and, during the Great War, with the country sandwiched between the Brits and the Germans, only one ship could be spared from the neutrality patrol to police both Iceland and the Faeroes, the 730-ton cutter (Inspektionsskib) Islands Falk (Icelandic Falcon), a humble 13-knotter with a pair of 6-pounders and another pair of 3-pounders. The Danish Navy’s Helsingør-built Inspektionsskib Islands Falk, all 183 feet of her. Completed in 1907 specifically for colonial service off Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroes, in 1928 she was replaced by the larger “fisheries cruiser” Fylla, the former sloop HMS Asphodel, and reassigned to metropolitan Denmark, where she was captured by the Germans in WWII. After Iceland gained a measure of self-autonomy in December…