14 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



Buenos Aires was reached March 2. Here the ship was held until 

 the following December by reason of anticipated dangers from 

 German raiders, floating mines, and submarines in the Atlantic. 



In respect to the case presented by the Carnegie, the Director 

 of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism recalls attention to 

 an instructive historical analogy which is at the same time equally 

 instructive by reason of its relentless antilogy. When in the 

 latter part of the eighteenth century Great Britain was at war 

 with France and the United States and when the distinguished 

 explorer, Captain Cook, was expected to return from what 

 proved to be his last voyage of discovery, the French Govern- 

 ment issued orders to its marine officers to the effect that ''such 

 discoveries being of general utility to all nations, it is the King's 

 pleasure that Captain Cook shall be treated as a commander of a 

 neutral and allied power." About the same time Franklin, then 

 representing the United States in France, issued (March 10, 1779) 

 "a passport for Captain Cook to all captains and commanders 

 of armed ships acting by commission from the Congress of the 

 United States of America, now in war with Great Britain," 

 instructing them to ''treat the said Captain Cook and his people 

 with all civility and kindness, affording them, as common friends 

 to mankind, all the assistance in your power, which they may 

 happen to stand in need of." Up to April 1917 the results of the 

 ocean magnetic surveys of the Carnegie, in aid of navigation, had 

 been transmitted promptly to the German marine authorities as 

 well as to all other national authorities issuing ocean sailing 

 charts, yet no such immunity or reciprocity as obtained in the 

 eighteenth century has been extended by the Central Empires in 

 these generally more enlightened years of the twentieth century. 



The program of the cruise in question included a series of loops 

 in the Atlantic during the summer and autumn of 1917 and a 

 return to a home port near the end of that year. But soon after 

 the United States became a belligerent in the world war it was 

 determined to hold the Carnegie at Buenos Aires pending the 

 advent of safer conditions. These appeared assured when, on 

 December 4, 1917, the vessel set out for the Pacific on a new 

 cruise (No. V), which might bring her either to San Francisco or 



