Now, if this cargo was not to be carried to its ultimate destination by the Springbok (and the proof does not warrant us in saying that it was), the plan must have been to send it forward by transshipment. And we think it evident that such was the purpose. We have already referred to the bills of lading, the manifest, and the letter of Speyer & Haywood as indicating this intention; and the same inference must be drawn from the disclosures by the invocation, that Isaac, Campbell & Co., had before supplied military goods to the rebel authorities by indirect shipments, and that Begbie was the owner of the Gertrude and engaged in the business of running the blockade.

"If these circumstances were insufficient grounds for a satisfactory conclusion, another might be found in the presence of the Gertrude in the harbor of Nassau with undenied intent to run the blockade, about the time when the arrival of the Springbok was expected there. It seems to us extremely probable that she had been sent to Nassau to await the arrival of the Springbok and to convey her cargo to a belligerent and blockaded port, and that she did not so convey it, only because the voyage was intercepted by the capture.

"All these condemnatory circumstances must be taken in connection with the fraudulent concealment attempted in the bills of lading and the manifest, and with the very remarkable fact that not only has no application been made by the claimants for leave to take further proof in order to furnish some explanation of these circumstances, but that no claim, sworn to personally, by either of the claimants, has ever been filed.

"Upon the whole case we can not doubt that the cargo was originally shipped with intent to violate the blockade; that the owners of the cargo intended that it should be transshipped at Nassau into some vessel more likely to succeed in reaching safely a blockaded port than the Springbok; that the voyage from London to the blockaded port was, as to cargo, both in law and in the intent of the parties, one voyage; and that the liability to condemnation, if captured during any part of that voyage, attached to the cargo from the time of sailing."

In conformity with this opinion the decree of condemnation of the district court was reversed as to the ship, but without costs or damages to the claimants, and was affirmed as to the cargo.

The Springbok (1866), 5 Wall. 1.

For the sentence below, May, 1863, see Blatchf. Prize Cases, 349. Commander T. II. Stevens, U. S. S. Sonoma, in a report to Admiral Wilkes, Feb. 9, 1863, said: "On the morning of the 3d of February, while looking for the Oreto, I captured the English bark Springbok, loaded with contraband, bound to Nassau, but having nothing in the way of a manifest of a legal character, and being upon the list furnished by you, I sent her to New York for adjudication in charge of Acting Master Foster Willis, with a prize crew from this vessel. The vessel was from

London. The capture was made in latitude 25° 41′ N., long. 74° 46′ W." (Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, Ser. I., vol. 2, pp. 69, 70.)

February 20, 1864, Earl Russell instructed Lord Lyons, then British minister at Washington, that Her Majesty's Government had considered the judgment of Judge Betts in the case of the Springbok, in communication with the law officers of the Crown, and saw no reason to change the opinion that they "could not officially interfere in the matter, but that the owners must be left to the usual and proper remedy of an appeal. On the contrary," declared Earl Russell, “a careful perusal of this elaborate and able judgment, containing the reasons of the judge, the authorities cited by him in support of it, and the important evidence properly invoked from the cases of the Stephen Hart and the Gertrude (which Her Majesty's Government have now seen for the first time), in which the same parties were concerned, goes so far to establish that the cargo of the Springbok, containing a considerable portion of contraband, was never really and bona fide destined for Nassau, but was either destined merely to call there or to be immediately transshipped after its arrival there without breaking bulk and without any previous incorporation into the common stock of that colony, and then to proceed to its real destination, being a blockaded port. The complicity of the owners of the ship, with the design of the owners of the cargo, is, to say the least, so probable on the evidence that there would be great difficulty in contending that this ship and cargo had not been rightly condemned."

February 5, 1868, the attorney of the owners of the cargo transmitted to Lord Stanley, then foreign secretary, the sentence of the Supreme Court, by which the condemnation of the cargo was affirmed and a decree of restitution entered as to the vessel. He also inclosed a copy of the joint opinion of Messrs. George Mellish, Q. C., and W. Vernon Harcourt, Q. C., holding the sentence to be erroneous and unjust, and stated that in that opinion he had no doubt the low officers of the Crown would concur. He asked that compensation be demanded for the owners of the cargo from the United States for the condemnation of their property.

This petition was referred to the law officers of the Crown, and on July 24, 1868, the foreign office, after an extended review of the papers in the case, including the opinion of counsel, announced the conclusion that Her Majesty's Government would not be "justified, on the materials before them, in making any claim" for compensation. With reference to the opinion of counsel, the foreign office observed that it found fault with the judgment because one ground taken by the court as justifying the conclusion that Nassau was not the real destination of the cargo, was derived from the forms of the

bills of lading, which, although they did not disclose the contents of the packages or name any consignee, the cargo being deliverable to "order or assigns," were, it was maintained, on the testimony of some of the principal brokers of London, "in the usual and regular form of consignment to an agent for sale at such a port as Nassau." No doubt, said the foreign office, the form was usual in time of peace; but a practice which might be "perfectly regular in time of peace under the municipal regulations of a particular state, will not always satisfy the laws of nations in time of war, more particularly when the voyage may expose the ship to the visit of belligerent cruisers." Thus it was laid down by Dr. Lushington, in the case of the Abo, that where cargo is shipped flagrante bello, the bills of lading on their face ought to express for whose account and risk the property was shipped. The ship's manifest in the present case was, said the foreign office, equally silent on the subject; and, "having regard to the very doubtful character of all trade ostensibly carried on at Nassau during the late war in the United States, and to many other circumstances of suspicion before the court, Her Majesty's Government are not disposed to consider the argument of the court on this point as otherwise than tenable."

As to the argument of counsel that the character of the cargo, being fitted for blockade running, was a proof that it was destined for Nassau, which was the great entrepôt for contraband of war, the foreign office declared that it was one " to which much weight can not be attached." Under" all the circumstances of time and place," and in the absence of evidence from the claimants as to what was to become of the goods on their arrival at Nassau, Her Majesty's Government thought "the court was entitled to draw the inference that the consignors of the goods intended to be parties to the immediate transshipment and importation of these goods into a blockaded port, on their being taken out of the Springbok."

In connection with the contention of counsel that the court erred in its statement that the Gertrude was at Nassau with undenied intent to run the blockade about the time when the Springbok was expected to arrive there, the foreign office observed that the decision of the court did not appear to be based on that ground, but found "that the owners of the cargo intended that it should be transshipped at Nassau in some vessel more likely to succeed in reaching a blockaded port than the Springbok." As a fact, said the foreign office, the voyage of the Gertrude appeared to have been delayed, but “when she did reach Nassau, after the capture of the Springbok, she took on board a contraband cargo, upon which the marks and numbers corresponded to some extent with certain marks and numbers on

@ 1 Spinks's Adm. Rep., 350.

many packages in the Springbok, and she was captured and condemned without any attempt being made to resist such condemnation." In the case of the Peterhoff, it appears that the British consul at New York, on August 3, 1863, transmitted to his Government a copy of Judge Betts's decree condemning the vessel and her cargo, and stated that the judge would later deliver in extenso his reasons for the condemnation. With reference to the decree, Earl Russell instructed Lord Lyons, Oct. 31, 1863, that Her Majesty's Government, having considered the judicial proceedings, in communication with the law officers of the Crown, adhered to the opinion that any official intervention in the present stage of the case was inexpedient. "The evidence," said Earl Russell," is certainly not clearly and unequivocally inadequate to sustain the sentence,' but, on the contrary, in various particulars tends to sustain it; such as the false swearing of the master, or, at least, the palpable equivocation and disingenuousness of his evidence; the throwing overboard of papers, the contents of which are said to be unknown at the moment of capture; the incredible and conflicting suggestions (in the absence of a true explanation which the claimants might have obtained) as to their contents, and the character of certain portions of the cargo."

April 22, 1864, the full opinion of Judge Betts in the case of the Peterhoff having been received, as well as that of Judge Marvin in the cases of the Dolphin and the Pearl, Earl Russell instructed Lord Lyons, after consulting the law officers of the Crown, that Her Majesty's Government did not consider that the decisions in the cases of the Peterhoff and the Dolphin called "for any intervention on their part. Her Majesty's Government," continued Earl Russell, "without adopting all the reasons assigned in these judgments (in some of them, indeed, they do not concur), are not prepared to say that the decisions themselves, under all the circumstances of the cases, are not in harmony with the principles of the judgments in the English prize courts. With respect to the case of the Pearl, Her Majesty's Government consider that the course pursued by the judge is fair and equitable.”

In the cases of the Springbok, Peterhoff, Dolphin, and Pearl, claims for compensation were made before the international commission under Art. XIII. of the treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871. None was presented in the case of the Bermuda.

In the case of the Springbok the commission unanimously disallowed all claims on account of the cargo. An award of $5,065 was made as damages for the detention of the vessel from the date of the decree of the district court till her discharge under the decree of the Supreme Court.

The Peterhoff claims were all unanimously disallowed.

The cases of the Dolphin and the Pearl were similarly disposed of. The commission consisted of the Hon. J. S. Frazer, sometime a a justice of the supreme court of the State of Indiana; the Rt. Hon. Russell Gurney, a member of Her Majesty's privy council, and recorder of London, and Count Corti, Italian minister at Washington.

Blue Book, Miscellaneous, No. 1 (1900); Int. Arbitrations, IV. 3928–3935; id. 3838-3843; Hale's Report, 92, 115; Int. Arbitrations, I. 690.

"The doctrine of continuous voyage,' as it has been interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court in cases previous to that of the Springbok, may be stated thus: A voyage which, at its start from the neutral port of lading for the carriage of contraband to the belligerent's country (or innocent cargo to a blockaded port of the enemy's country), includes in its project and design this destined deposit of its lading in the enemy's ports, is open to belligerent interception, from the start, although it should appear that the ship and cargo were actually seeking a neutral port when intercepted, provided, it should, also, appear that from the neutral port the cargo was intended to be, as a part of the original and planned adventure, carried to the enemy's port. And, this latter element of the completion of the transit from the first neutral port of departure to the enemy's port being embraced in the original guilty scheme, the fact that the carriage from the intermediate neutral port was to be by transshipment, and taken up by a new bottom, does not purge the adventure of its guilt, or protect the first stage of the voyage from interception, and the ship and cargo from condemnation. The doctrine is as extremely stated in the head note of The Bermuda, 3 Wallace, 515, as anywhere: "A voyage from a neutral to a belligerent port is one and the same voyage, whether the destination be ulterior or direct, and whether with or without the interposition of one or more intermediate ports; and whether to be performed by one vessel or several employed in the same transaction and in the accomplishment of the same purpose.' "The recognized doctrine, of which we make no complaint, that vessels carrying cargo to belligerent ports under blockade, are liable to seizure and condemnation from the commencement to the end of the voyage (the Bermuda, ut supra), is thus thought to be made applicable to a project of violation of blockade, at any stage of its execution, although such project included intermediate ports and transshipment and carriage by new bottoms.

"The condition of proof, and the interpretation of it, which, in this extreme case of the Bermuda, was thought by the court to justify condemnation, must not be overlooked and should be carefully weighed. It really gives the measure of the doctrine of the court, laid down in that extreme case, on the subject of continuous voyage.'