Prince. — Territorial Waters 181 



specially prohibiting foreign trawlers from approaching within 

 four miles of her coast. The violation of this law renders the 

 offenders liable to a penalty of from one thousand to five thousand 

 kroners, and the confiscation of the offending vessels. The 

 British Government directly called the attention of trawlers from 

 British ports to the existence of this law, and in the official notice 

 from the Board of Trade, London, dated November, 1908, and 

 signed by the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Walter J. Howell, and 

 headed, "Notice to owners and skippers of trawlers in territorial 

 waters," it is stated that "The Board of Trade desires to call 

 attention to the fact that a new law has recently come into force 

 in Norway under which fishing with a trawl is forbidden in 

 Norwegian territorial waters. * * Territorial waters of Norway 

 are four English miles, not three miles. " 



Attempts have been made at various times to induce Norway 

 and Sweden to reduce this coastal limit, and when these two 

 nations separated from each other the British foreign office 

 urged Norway to join in the North Sea Convention of 1882, but 

 she rejected the proposal, because it would have bound her to a 

 three-mile limit. It is interesting to note that Denmark enforces 

 a three-mile limit in her western waters, but a four-mile limit in 

 the Baltic Sea. 



It is by no means true, moreover, that the three-mile limit 

 has the authority of antiquity or the universal consent of leading 

 nations, and some of the most famous jurists, such as Martens, 

 admitted that any nation might acquire marine dominion beyond 

 a three mile limit; indeed he asserted that three leagues, not 

 three miles, was really the limit. Nor is the idea correct that gun- 

 range in old times was three miles, and that the limit was based 

 on that. Indeed, the earliest authority to announce the theory 

 was the Sicilian Secretary of the Italian legation at Paris, Galiani, 

 who first stated that a distance of three miles was equivalent to 

 the range of guns, yet that two leagues, or twice that distance, 

 should be the area for observing neutrality, or in other words 

 should be the limit for enforcing territorial rights. Moreover 

 there was uncertainty as to the base from which the three miles 

 might be measured. Norway and Denmark and some other 

 countries adopted a straight line drawn from point to point along 

 their coast, and measured the three miles from that. An ancient 



