and Secretary of State
James F. Byrnes wave at
HMS Hambledon while on board the
USS Augusta on the river Scheldt as they head to the
Potsdam Conference on 15 July 1945 The Scheldt estuary has always had considerable commercial and strategic importance. Called
Scaldis in
Roman times, it was important for the shipping lanes to
Roman Britain.
Nehalennia was venerated at its mouth. The
Franks took control over the region about the year 260 and at first interfered with the Roman supply routes as pirates. Later they became allies of the Romans. With the various divisions of the
Frankish Empire in the 9th century, the Scheldt eventually became the border between the Western and Eastern parts of the Empire, which later became France and the
Holy Roman Empire. This status quo remained intact, at least on paper, until 1528, but by then, both the
County of Flanders on the western bank and Zeeland and the
Duchy of Brabant on the east were part of the
Habsburg possessions of the
Seventeen Provinces. Antwerp was the most prominent harbour in Western Europe. After this city
fell back under Spanish control in 1585, the
Dutch Republic took control of
Zeelandic Flanders, a strip of land on the left bank, and closed the Scheldt for shipping. That shifted the trade to the ports of
Amsterdam and
Middelburg and seriously crippled Antwerp, an important and traumatic element in the history of relations between the Netherlands and what was to become Belgium. Access to the river was the subject of the brief
Kettle War of 1784, and during the
French Revolution shortly afterwards, the river was reopened in 1792. Once Belgium had claimed its
independence from the Netherlands in 1830, the treaty of the Scheldt determined that the river should remain accessible to ships heading for Belgian
ports. Nevertheless, the Dutch government would demand a
toll from passing vessels until 16 July 1863.
The Question of the Scheldt, a study providing "a history of the international legal arrangements governing the Western Scheldt", was prepared for the use of British negotiators at the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919. In the
Second World War, the Scheldt estuary once again became a contested area. Despite Allied control of
Antwerp, German forces still occupied fortified positions in September 1944 throughout the Scheldt estuary west and north, preventing any Allied shipping from reaching the port. In the
Battle of the Scheldt, the
Canadian First Army successfully cleared the area, allowing supply convoys direct access to the port of Antwerp by November 1944. ==Tributaries and sub-tributaries==