maintopsail, foretopsail, and mainstaysail. There are 75 tons of ballast, mostly of pig iron, and the vessel has a capacity of 400 barrels outside of the store rooms. The present-time cost of the hull, sails and rigging is $12,000. The engine is of 85 horse power, valued at $6,000. The cost of gasoline averages about $170 per month for the

season.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FISHERIES QUESTION

By the Fisheries Question is meant the international complications that have arisen between the governments of the United States and Great Britain over the interpretations placed upon the intent and meaning of the several treaties that have been made regulating the fishing interests of the two countries. The fisheries question has come up before the American people several times for settlement, on each occasion presenting new issues and meeting with unexpected difficulties in the way of permanent settlement. The question has to deal, largely, with issues that have arisen from the New England fishing interests. In the earlier stages of its history the contentions had to do with the enjoyment of fishing privileges in waters adjacent to British coasts in America; at the present time, the question has to deal mostly with the securing of Newfoundland herring for bait in the American fisheries.

The first grant of fishing privileges was secured in 1783 when the treaty of peace was concluded between the United States and Great Britain. The contentions of the American commissioners at the time for fishing rights and privileges were so strong that, for a time, there was grave danger that a treaty of peace could not be effected. The conditions of the Treaty of 1783 held until the opening of the war of 1812. When arrangements were made at the close of hostilities for a new treaty of peace, it was found that Great Britain maintained the proposition that the United States, by going to war with Great Britain, had

abandoned her rights to the provisions of the former treaty that had to do with the fisheries.

Accordingly, as has been noted in Chapter VII, a special commission was appointed in 1818, which made different arrangements for the fisheries and which was a very serious limitation of the rights enjoyed under the first treaty. The provisions of the convention of 1818 have been the basis of our fishing rights in Canadian and Newfoundland waters much of the time since 1818, and, with certain modifications, are still in force.

It appears that serious misunderstandings arose soon after the ratification of the Convention of 1818 because of different interpretations of several of its provisions. The British Parliament, in June, 1819, passed an act following closely the fisheries article of the convention and providing for its enforcement.1 Between 1818 and 1854 the Provincial Legislatures of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick passed various statutes purporting to be based on the treaty. They were more stringent and even more specific in their application than the English Act.2 Within half a dozen years after the ratification of the treaty, correspondence had arisen between the two governments over the seizure of American fishing vessels in the Bay of Fundy and their subsequent rescue from Canadian authorities by Eastport enthusiasts. But from 1824 to 1836 little trouble seems to have occurred.

In 1836 the Legislature of Nova Scotia passed what was commonly designated the "hovering act," in which the hovering of American vessels within three miles of the coast or harbors was sought to be prevented by imposing various regulations and penalties. Subsequently "claims were asserted to exclude fishermen from all bays and even from all waters within lines drawn from headland to

1 Sabine, p. 22.

2 Elliott, p. 61.

4

headland, to forbid them to navigate the Gut of Canso, and to deny them all privileges of traffic, including the purchase of bait and supplies in the British colonial ports. From 1839 down to 1854 there were numerous seizures, and in 1852 the home government sent over a force of war vessels to assist in patrolling the coast." It was contended on the part of the United States that the three miles as stated in Article I of the Treaty of 1818 meant three miles from the shores of those bays, creeks, etc., following their sinuosities. Therefore all bays with an entrance more than three miles broad would be accessible to Americans for the purpose of fishing, except within three miles of the shores of the bay.

On the other hand, the British interpretation of this clause was that three miles from a bay meant three miles from the mouth of the bay, "in other words, three miles from a line drawn from headland to headland of the bay. Moreover this construction was applied not only to the great arms of the sea, as the bays of Fundy and Chaleurs, but also to all indentations of the coast, as the north coast of Prince Edward Island from North Cape to East Cape, and the northeast coast of Cape Breton, from North Cape to Cow Bay." 2

Two notable cases of seizure arose from an attempt to enforce the principle of the "headland doctrine." On May 10, 1843, the American schooner Washington, while fishing in the Bay of Fundy ten miles from the shore, was seized by a revenue schooner on the charge of violating the treaty of 1818. She was carried to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where she was decreed in the Vice-admiralty Court to be forfeited to the Crown, and was ordered to be sold with her stores. Under the Claims Convention of 1853, the case of this vessel was referred to a joint commission

1 Snow, American Diplomacy, p. 441.

2 Moore, International Law Digest, I, p. 783.

which disagreed. Then the case was given to Mr. Joshua Bates, an American financier connected with the house of Baring Brothers in London, who allowed to the owners of the Washington the sum of $3,000 damages, on the ground "that the Bay of Fundy is not a British bay, nor a bay within the meaning of the word as used in the treaties of 1783 and 1818.' On the fourth of August, 1844, the American schooner Argus was seized while fishing off the coast of Cape Breton at a distance of twenty-eight miles from shore. The same umpire, Mr. Bates, found no case of violation of the treaty, and awarded to the owners of the Argus the sum of $2,000 for the loss of their vessel and its stores. The "headland" rule as applied to the Bay of Fundy was relaxed by the British Government in 1845.

As early as 1847 England proposed a reciprocity treaty governing the fisheries of the two countries, but no agreement was reached by the two governments and the relations between the two became more and more critical. When the excitement had reached a high pitch and war was talked of, the British Government, in 1854, sent Lord Elgin to Washington for a conference with Mr. Marcy, Secretary of State. The result of the conference was the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, a treaty in relation to the fisheries, commerce and navigation. In the first Article of the Treaty it was

"agreed by the high contracting parties, that, in addition to the liberties secured to the United States fishermen by the abovementioned Convention of October 20, 1818, of taking, curing, and drying fish on certain coasts of the British North American colonies therein defined, the inhabitants of the United States shall have, in common with the subjects of Her Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind, except shell fish, on the seacoasts and shores, and in the bays, harbors and creeks 1 Moore, I, pp. 785-87.