úratively speaking she has hauled down the neutral flag and run up the flag of the belligerents in whose behalf she is acting. Such a vessel is treated substantially as if she had actually changed her flag for the whole voyage. She is liable to capture and condemnation, not only on the outward voyage but on the return voyage, noth withstanding that her homeward bound cargo may be, and ordinarily is, innocent merchandise. Having sailed in the service of a belligerent power she is supposed to continue in that service until she makes her own port. After she has made her home port she is at liberty to resume her neutral flag, and when sailing under it her previous conduct is not open to inquiry. (The Galen, 37 U. S. Court of Claims, 89, Nott, C. J., Dec. 9, 1901.)

The French prize court in the case of the Frau-Houwina in 1855 affirmed that

Contraband of war is liable to seizure under a neutral flag, when it belongs to the enemy, or when it is destined to the territory, the army or fleet of the enemy.

In the case of the Circassian decided in 1864 (2 Wallace, Supreme Court Reports, 135), Chief Justice Chase.

affirmed that-

It is a well-established principle of prize law, as administered by the courts, both of the United States and Great Britain, that sailing from a neutral port with intent to enter a blockaded port, and with knowledge of the existence of the blockade, subjects the vessel, and, in most cases, its cargo, to capture and condemnation. Yeaton v. Fry, 5 Cranch, 335; 1 Kent Com., 150; The Frederick Molke, 1 C. Rob., 72; The Columbia, 1 C. Rob., 154; The Neptunus, 2 C. Rob., 94. We are entirely satisfied with this rule. It was established, with some hesitation, when sailing vessels were the only vehicles of ocean commerce; but now, when steam and electricity have made all nations neighbors, and blockade running from neutral ports seems to have been organized as a business, and almost raised to a profession, it is clearly seen to be indispensable to the efficient exercise of belligerent rights. It is not likely to be abandoned until the nations, by treaty, shall consent to abolish capture of private property on the seas, and with it the whole law and practice of commercial blockade.

And further the decision states:

We agree that if the ship had been going to Havana with an honest intent to ascertain whether the blockade at New Orleans yet remained in force, and with no design to proceed farther if such should prove to be the case, neither ship nor cargo would have been subject to lawful seizure. But it is manifest that such was not the intent. The existence of the blockade was known at the inception of the voyage and its discontinuance was not expected. The vessel was

FURTHER EXTENSION OF DOCTRINE.

85 chartered and her cargo shipped with the purpose of forcing the blockade. The destination to Havana was merely colorable. It proves nothing beyond a mere purpose to touch at that port, perhaps and probably, with the expectation of getting information which would facilitate the success of the unlawful undertaking. It is quite possible that Havana, under the circumstances, would have turned out to be, as was insisted in argument, a locus penitentiæ, but a place for repentance does not prove repentance before the place was reached. It is quite possible that the news which would have met the vessel at Havana would have induced the master and shippers to abandon their design to force the blockade by ascending the Mississippi, but future possibilities can not change present conditions. Nor is it at all certain that the purpose to break the blockade would have been abandoned. On the contrary, it is quite possible that the "ulterior destination" mentioned in the bills of lading would have been changed to some other blockaded port. But this is not important. Neither possibilities nor probabilities could change the actual intention one way or another. At the time of capture ship and cargo were on their way to New Orleans, under contract that the cargo should be discharged there and not elsewhere, and that the blockade should be forced in order to the fulfillment of that contract. This condition made ship and cargo then and there lawful prize.

In the same case the court also held that—

A vessel sailing from a neutral port with intent to violate a blockade is liable to capture and condemnation as a prize from the time of sailing, though she intend to call at another neutral port, not reached at time of capture, before proceeding to her ulterior destination.

The position here taken makes the vessel liable for intent of the voyage.

It may happen, however, that a neutral vessel is making a voyage between two neutral ports only, but that the cargo has a belligerent destination to which it is to be taken by another vessel. Could the doctrine of continuous voyages be extended to apply to ship and cargo in the first stage of the voyage between the neutral ports?

The doctrine of continuous voyage was further extended to cover such instances in the case of the Bermuda (3 Wallace U. S. Supreme Court Reports, p. 514) in 1865, in which Chief Justice Chase said:

The interposition of a neutral port between neutral departure and belligerent destination has always been a favorite resort of contraband carrriers and blockade runners. But it never avails them when the ultimate destination is ascertained. A transportation from one point

to another remains continuous so long as intent remains unchanged, no matter what stoppages or transshipments intervene.

This was distinctly declared by this court in 1855 in Jecker v. Montgomery (18 How., 114), in reference to American shipments to Mexican ports during the war of this country with Mexico, as follows: "Attempts have been made to evade the rule of public law by the interposition of a neutral port between the shipment from the belligerent port and the ultimate destination in the enemy's country, but in all such cases the goods have been condemned as having been taken in a course of commerce rendering them liable to confiscation." The same principle is equally applicable to the conveyance of contraband to belligerents and the vessel which with the consent of the owner is so employed in the first stage of a continuous transportation is equally liable to capture and confiscation with the vessel which is employed in the last if the employment is such as to make either so liable.

This rule of continuity is well established in respect to cargo.

At first, Sir William Scott held that the landing and warehousing of the goods and the payment of the duties on importation was a sufficient test of the termination of the original voyage, and that the subsequent exportation of them to a belligerent port was lawful. But in a later case, in an elaborate judgment, Sir William Grant reviewed all the cases, and established the rule, which has never been shaken, that even the landing of goods and payment of duties does not interrupt the continuity of the voyage of the cargo, unless there be an honest intention to bring them into the common stock of the country. If there be an intention, either formed at the time of original shipment or afterwards, to send the goods forward to an unlawful destination, the continuity of the voyage will not be broken, as to the cargo, by any transactions at the intermediate port.

There seems to be no reason why this reasonable and settled doctrine should not be applied to each ship where several are engaged successively in one transaction, namely, the conveyance of a contraband cargo to a belligerent. The question of liability must depend on the good or bad faith of the owners of the ships. If a port of the voyage is lawful, and the owners of the ship conveying the cargo in that port are ignorant of the ulterior destination and do not hire their ship with a view to it, the ship can not be liable; but if the ulterior destination is the known inducement to the partial voyage and the ship is engaged in the latter with a view to the former, then whatever liability may attach to the final voyage must attach to the earlier, undertaken with the same cargo and in continuity of its conveyance. Successive voyages, connected by a common plan and a common object, form a plural unit. They are links of the same chain, each identical in description with every other, and each essential to the continuous whole. The ships are planks of the same bridge, all of the same kind, and all necessary to the convenient passage of persons and property from one end to the other.

CASE OF THE SPRINGBOK.

87

In affirming the decision of the district court in the case of the Stephen Hart in 1865 (3 Wallace, Supreme Court Reports, p. 559) Chief Justice Chase said:

Neutrals who place their vessels under belligerent control, and engage them in belligerent trade, or permit them to be sent with contraband cargoes under cover of false destination to neutral ports, while the real destination is to belligerent ports, impress upon them the character of the belligerent in whose service they are employed, and can not complain if they are seized and condemned as enemy property.

The case of the Springbok, decided in the United States Supreme Court in 1866, also gave full extension to the doctrine of continuous voyage. This vessel sailed from London December 8, 1862, on a voyage ostensibly for Nassau. The vessel was captured before reaching that port and brought into New York where she was libeled as prize. The district court condemned the vessel and cargo as prize of war. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decree as to the vessel and affirmed the decree as to the cargo.

The summary of the case shows that when goods destined for a belligerent are in transit between neutral ports in a neutral ship the ship is liable to seizure in order to secure the condemnation of the goods, but itself may not be condemned as prize.

In regard to the cargo, Mr. Chief Justice Chase gave the opinion of the court that

Upon the whole case we can not doubt that the cargo was originally shipped with the 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 a blockaded port than the Springbok; that the voyage from London to the blockaded port was, as to the cargo, both in law and in intent of the parties, one voyage; and that the liability to condemnation, if captured during any part of the voyage, attached to the cargo from the time of sailing. (5 Wallace, 1.) Travers Twiss, commenting on these cases in 1877, says: In the case of the Springbok and her cargo the court released the ship and condemned the cargo. It released the ship, being satisfied that it was going no farther than to Nassau, a neutral port. It condemned the cargo, having no doubt that it was the intention of the

owners to tranship it at Nassau to some blockaded port. The judgment of the court was thus expressed: “On the whole, 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 transhipped 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 the liability of condemnation, if captured during any part of the voyage, attached to the cargo from the time of sailing." The Chief Justice had already illustrated the principle in the case of the Bermuda by a somewhat fanciful metaphor. "Successive voyages connected by a common plan and a common object form a plural unit. They are links of the same chain, each identical in description with every other and each essential to the continuous whole." Unfortunately, however, as regards the application of the metaphor to the case of the cargo of the Springbok, the last link, which was essential to complete the chain, was wanting, as a matter of fact, whilst in the English cases, from which the metaphor has been borrowed, the chain was in fact complete. (The Doctrine of Continuous Voyages, Law Magazine and Review, Nov., 1877, p. 24.)

Travers Twiss also protested against the extension of the idea of blockade through an attempt to introduce it as a factor in continuous voyage, as in the case of the Springbok. He said:

Whatever may be the correct interpretation of the Fourth Article of the Declaration of Paris, and whatever effect may be practically given to it by the powers who are parties to it, one thing may be affirmed for certain, that it was the intention of those who drew up that Declaration to mitigate and not to aggravate the restraint imposed upon the commerce of Neutrals by the blockade of an enemy's ports. Great Britain and the United States of America had until then been content to enforce against neutral merchants the confiscation of their property upon proof of some constructive attempt upon their part to violate blockade; it has remained for the younger sister, under her extraordinary difficulties, to initiate the doctrine of prospective intention, on the part of a neutral merchant, to violate blockade, and to subject him to the confiscation of his property, not upon the evidence of any present voyage of the ship and cargo, in which the ship and cargo have been intercepted, but upon the presumption of a future voyage of the cargo alone to a blockaded port, after it has been landed from the ship at a neutral port." He also contends against confiscation "upon the suspicion" that the cargo has an ulterior destination to enemy's uses. (Law Magazine and Review, Nov. 1877, p. 34.)