766 



PRIZE. 



on the register of a vessel, provided for in the 

 proclamation of blockade, were unnecessary, 

 where it appeared that the offending vessel had 

 full previous knowledge of the existence of the 

 blockade, and that it was being maintained by 

 a blockading force. Upon the principles thus 

 settled, the law of prize, as established by 

 courts of admiralty under the law of nations, 

 has been applied to captures made during the 

 present war, it being for such purposes re- 

 garded as a public war, with all the conse- 

 quences, with respect to blockades and trading 

 with the enemy in contraband of war, and 

 with respect to enemy property captured at 

 sea, which are applicable in the case of a war 

 between two recognized powers. The business 

 of the courts of the United States in prize cases 

 during the present war has, therefore, been, as 

 a general thing, simply the application of the 

 rules of prize law to the facts of the cases 

 which have arisen. Some questions however 

 of peculiar interest have been decided by the 

 district courts of the United States in New 

 York and in Florida, involving the rights of 

 neutral vessels. The first case of the kind in 

 New York was that of the Stephen Hart, a 

 schooner which sailed from London, Novem- 

 ber 19th, 1861, on an ostensible voyage to Car- 

 denas, in Cuba. She was captured by a United 

 States vessel of war, on the 29th of January, 

 1862, off the southern coast of Florida, about 

 twenty-five miles from Key West. Her cargo 

 consisted entirely of arms and munitions of 

 war, such as rifles, sabres, cannon, cartridges, 

 percussion caps, powder, blankets, &c. The 

 vessel and cargo were claimed as the property 

 of English subjects. The principles decided by 

 the court in the case were : that the question 

 whether or not the property laden on board of 

 the vessel was being transported in the business 

 of lawful commerce, was not to be decided by 

 merely deciding the question as to whether the 

 vessel was documented for and sailing upon a 

 voyage from London to Cardenas ; that the 

 commerce was in the destination and intended 

 use of the property laden on board of the ves- 

 sel, and not in the incidental, ancillary and 

 temporary voyage of the vessel, which might 

 be but one of many carriers through which the 

 property was to reach its true and original 

 destination; that neither was the unlawfulness 

 of the transportation of contraband goods de- 

 termined by deciding the question as to wheth- 

 er their immediate destination was to a port of 

 the enemy ; that the proper test to be applied 

 was, whether the contraband goods were in- 

 tended for sale or consumption in a neutral 

 market, or whether the direct and intended 

 object of their transportation was to supply the 

 enemy with them ; that, to justify the capture, 

 it was enough that the immediate object of the 

 voyage was to supply the enemy, and that the 

 contraband property was certainly destined to 

 his immediate use ; that if the contraband cargo 

 of the vessel had been destined for the use of 

 the fleet of the enemy lying in the harbor of 



Cardenas, there could be no doubt that it 

 might lawfully have been captured as prize of 

 war, on its way to Cardenas ; that if the con- 

 traband cargo was really destined, when it left 

 its port of departure in England, for the use of 

 the enemy, in the country of the enemy, and 

 not for sale or consumption in the neutral port, 

 no principle of the law of nations, and no con- 

 sideration of the rights and interests of lawful 

 neutral commerce, could require that the mere 

 touching at the neutral port, either for the pur- 

 pose of making it a new point of departure for 

 the vessel to a port of the enemy, or for the 

 purpose of transshipping the contraband cargo 

 into another vessel, which might carry it to 

 the destination which was intended for it when 

 it left its port of departure, should exempt the 

 vessel or the contraband cargo from capture 

 prize of war; that if it was the intention of the 

 owner of the vessel, or of the owners of he 

 cargo having the control of the movement 

 of the vessel, that she should simply touc 

 at Cardenas, and should proceed thence 

 Charleston or some other port of the enemy, 

 her voyage was not a voyage prosecut 

 by a neutral vessel from one neutral port 

 to another neutral port, but a voyage which 

 was, at the time of her seizure, in course of 

 prosecution to a port of the enemy, although 

 she had not as yet reached Cardenas, and al- 

 though her regular papers documented her for 

 a voyage from London to Cuba ; that such a 

 voyage was one begun and carried on in viola- 

 tion of the belligerent right of the United States 

 to blockade the ports of the enemy, and to pre- 

 vent the introduction into those ports of arms 

 and munitions of war ; that the division of the 

 continuous transportation of contraband goods 

 into several intermediate transportations, by 

 means of intermediate voyages by different 

 vessels carrying such goods, could not make 

 the transportation, which was, in fact, a unit 

 to become several transportations, although, f 

 effect the entire transportation of the goods, : 

 quired several voyages by different vessel 

 each of which might, in a certain sense, and fo 

 certain purposes, be said to have its own voy- 

 age, and although each of such voyages, except 

 the last one in the circuit, might be between 

 neutral ports ; that such a transaction could not 

 make any of the parts of the entire transporta- 

 tion of the contraband cargo a lawful transporta- 

 tion, when the transportation would not have 

 been lawful if it had not been thus divided ; 

 that if the guilty intention that the contraband 

 goods should reach a port of the enemy exist- 

 ed when such goods left their English port, 

 that guilty intention could not be obliterated 

 by the innocent intention of stopping at a neu- 

 tral port on the way ; that if there was, ^in 

 stopping at such port, no intention of transship- 

 ping the cargo, and if it was to proceed to the 

 enemy's country in the same vessel in which it 

 came from England, there could, of course, be 

 no purpose of lawful neutral commerce at the 

 neutral port, by the sale or use of the cargo in 



