LEGAL ASPECT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20084, 2 November 1939, Page 2

LEGAL ASPECT

SEQUESTRATION POINT

SEA PRIZE RULES

The only real question raised by the German seizure of the City of Flint is the validity of sequestrating the prize in a neutral (Russian) port pending adjudication of the capture by a German Prize Court, says Professor A. H. Charteris, Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. As a German prize, the vessel would fly the German war flag and rani; as a public vessel under German control. She was entitled therefore, to call, as she did, at the Norwegian port of Tromso, en route for her destination, the Russian anchorage in Kola Bay, Murmansk. Declaration of London A German warship is entitled to visit and search at sea any neutral merchantman and, in case of suspicion of carrying contraband, to send her in for adjudication by a German Prize Court. The fate of the contraband cargo and of the carrying vessel must be kept separate. Contraband goods are liable to confiscation, but onlv if hostile destination is established "to the satisfaction of the Prize Court. It is probable that in the present, as in the last war. the German Government is enforcing the unratified Declaration of London, which has provisions on hostile destination of contraband. The carrying ship is, in general, not penalised except by loss of freight during diversion, but under the declaration i.s liable to confiscation if the contraband cargo "reckoned by either volume, value, weight or freight" amounts to more than onehalf of the total cargo (tince much proportion shows that carriage of the contraband was the principal object of the adventure). - The British rule is less rigid. The Privy Council held in the last war that the ship was liable to confiscation if the contraband cargo constituted "a substantial portion of the whole" with the knowledge of the owner, charterer, ov master. War Prizes and Neutrals As to sequestration of enemy prizes in a neutral port, this is advocated is likely to lessen temptation to destroy prizes at sea, and, on that accountffis permitted to neutral Powers by Article 23 of the Thirteenth Hague Convention of 1907 (Neutrality in Maritime Warfare), which has been ratified by Russia, by Germany with a reservation not relating to this and adhered to by the United States, but only with express reservation, inter alia, as to this Article. Great Britain has signed the Convention with a similar reservation, but has apparently not ratified it.

The oOTicinls of the owners of the vessel, the United States Martitime Commission, from whom she had been chartered by the United States Lice, have expressed the opinion that the seizure of a neutral vessel is legal when the cargo is at least 51 per cent contraband and the master knows of its contraband nature. There is confusion here, says Professor Charteris, between the right to detain the vessel on suspicion, which is independent of the amount of contraband, and the right to pronounce decree of good prize, which, under the Declaration of London, but rot under the customary rule, dc pends, as explained, on a numerical calculation in respect of the contraband.