THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 189 



the profitable game the Americans were brought 

 within what the British claimed were &quot;bays/ 

 and as such were barred to the fishermen. A 

 &quot;bay/ 1 in the sense of the treaty, was, accord 

 ing to the contention of the British, any ex 

 panse of water designated by that name, so 

 that an American fisherman was an intruder 

 even twenty miles from land, if he was fishing 

 in water that was called a bay. The Americans 

 claimed that the term &quot;bay&quot; applied with cer 

 tain qualifications only to an indentation of the 

 coast-line of such size and shape that a ship, 

 when entering it, must pass within three miles 

 of the land. In its full development the Brit 

 ish doctrine held that the &quot;coasts&quot; from which 

 the Americans were excluded were defined by 

 a broken line running from headland to head 

 land, so that there was no right to fish within 

 three miles of such a line. The American 

 claim was that British jurisdiction extended no 

 more than three miles from actual land, and 

 that the geometrical lines from headland to 

 headland included often large portions of the 

 high seas that were free to all. 



There was abundant material in this conflict 

 for endless debate by the experts of the law 

 of nations. Of most importance to the prac- 



