GERMAN COCOA SUPPLIES THAT NEVER GOT THERE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3161, 13 August 1917, Page 5

GERMAN COCOA SUPPLIES THAT NEVER GOT THERE

VALUABLE CARGO CONDEMNED. • In the Prize Court in London recently the President, Sir Samuel Evans, condemned as good and lawful prize a cargo consisting of 15,550 bags of cocoa beans seized on board the Dutch steamship Rijn, in course of a voyage from Las Palmas to Amsterdam. Tho value of the cargo was .£87,000. The President, in the course of liis judgment 6aid that the Rijn sailed from Las Palmas ott March 23, 1915, and vras on April 1- diverted to an English port, where the seizure took place. The cargo had been transhipped at Las Palmas from the German vessel Aseuan, one of the Kosrnos Line, having 'been originally ship-' pod in So.ut'li America in June, 1914, by the Associacion de Agricultores do Ecuador for a German port. At tho outbreak of war the Assuan took refuge at Las Palmas, and for seven or eight months the shippers did not appear to have done auytuiiig in relation to the valuable cargo held up in the self-in-terned ship in the Canaries. -—The cood3 were now claimed.by P. Oniies'and Zoon, of Amsterdam, who alleged that it was sold to. them iu January, 1915, by the neutral shippers, after which the cargo was transliipped to the Rijn. Having reviewed the facts at length, His Lordship said that no satisfactory evidence had' been given to show that the property in the goods wis in neutrals at tho timo of tho transhipment, and he drew the Inference that Hie goods had before that time become, the property of some consignees in . Germany. Further, the claimants had failed to establish that the property in the goods ever becalho vested in them or that they now were or ever were the owners. If, however, thft property had become vested in them they acted in the whole transaction' merely as instruments for one Embden, of Hamburg (the real owner), and 6ubjecti to his .directions for the purpose of getting the goods through to Germany. He, therefore, condemned the goods as conditional contraband destined for an enemy base of supplies.