As early as 1870 a government defence committee recommended that coastal artillery batteries defending British seaports should be supplemented by fixed minefields fired electrically from the shore, but it was not until the 1880s that this was acted upon.

[1][2][3] In 1886 a meeting held at the instigation of Sir Albert Rollit agreed to form a corps of Volunteer Submarine Miners in Hull to man the defences of the Humber Estuary.

The new company was entitled the Humber Division Submarine Miners and comprised 60 men, many of them highly skilled craftsmen attracted by the considerably higher pay during training periods than was offered to other Volunteer units.

The Humber Submarine Miners were disbanded the following year and reconstituted as a militia unit, but many of the Volunteers resigned rather than transfer to more onerous terms of service.

[1][4] When the Volunteers were subsumed into the new Territorial Force (TF) under the Haldane Reforms in 1908, the remaining submarine miners were converted into fortress engineers, but in the case of the Humber defences a completely new unit had to be raised.

[9] Although the East Coast was attacked by the German High Seas Fleet on 16 December 1914 (the Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby) and again on 24 April 1916 (the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft), and was regularly bombed by Zeppelin airships, the fortress engineers were nevertheless able to release 1st Line men to provide 1/1st East Riding Field Company, RE for active service in the field.

[12] The company embarked for France on 17 September 1915,[13] and three days later it joined the Regular 3rd Division serving with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front.

At this stage of the war the NAD was barely troubled by German raids, and most of the men of medical category A1 had been withdrawn from the AA defences and sent to join the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front[18] All TF units were demobilised in 1919 after the Armistice with Germany.

The East Riding (Fortress) Engineers, consisting of No 1 (Works) and Nos 2 and 3 (Lights) Companies, was reformed in the renamed Territorial Army (TA) in 1920, forming part of North Eastern Coastal Defences in 50th (Northumbrian) Divisional Area, with its HQ still at Colonial St, Hull.