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The
Broad Fourteens is an area of the southern
North SeaThe North Sea is a marginal, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf. The Dover Strait and the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north connect it to the Atlantic Ocean. It is more than long and wide, with an area of around...
that is fairly consistently fourteen
fathomA fathom is a unit of length in the Imperial system , used especially for measuring the depth of water.There are 2 yards in a fathom...
s (26 m) deep (thus, on a
nautical chartA nautical chart is a graphic representation of a maritime area and adjacent coastal regions. Depending on the scale of the chart, it may show depths of water and heights of land , natural features of the seabed, details of the coastline, navigational hazards, locations of natural and man-made aids...
with depths given in fathoms, a broad area with many "14" notations). It is located off the coast of the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
and south of the
Dogger BankDogger Bank is a large sandbank in a shallow area of the North Sea about off the east coast of England. It extends over approximately , with its maximum dimensions being about from north to south and from east to west...
, roughly between longitude
3°EThe meridian 3° east of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Africa, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole....
and 4°30'E and latitude 52°30'N and 53°30'N. Compare to the
Long Forties200px|rightThe Long Forties is an area of the northern North Sea that is fairly consistently forty fathoms deep . It is located between the northeast coast of Scotland and the southwest coast of Norway, centred about 57°N 0°30′E...
.
The area is known to the
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
and
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
navies as the
Hoofden.
The area has been the scene of countless naval engagements throughout history.
The shallowness of this area means that the largest
oil tankerAn oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries...
s cannot traverse the
English ChannelThe English Channel is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest, to only in the Strait of Dover...
from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean because their
draftThe draft of a ship's hull is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull , with the thickness of the hull included; in the case of not being included the draft outline would be obtained...
is deeper than the depth in the Broad Fourteens.