HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE TERRITORIAL SEA 567 



the Adriatic was soon finally extinguished. When Napoleon 

 conquered Venice in 1795 and transferred her like a chattel 

 to Austria, her maritime sovereignty came to an end, and 

 the picturesque and symbolic ceremony of " espousing " the 

 Adriatic, which had been performed by the Doge every year 

 for many centuries, terminated with it. 1 



The similar pretension of England to sovereignty of the 

 sea, as previously mentioned, did not survive till this cen- 

 tury, except on the point of the flag ; and this ceremony 

 fell into desuetude, and was abandoned finally in 1805. Great 

 Britain now appeared rather as a champion of the freedom 

 of the sea than as an advocate of mare clausum. This was 

 particularly shown in connection with the rights claimed by 

 Denmark in the northern sea, especially at Iceland and the 

 Danish portion of Greenland. As already stated, Denmark 

 tried in the preceding century to keep alive her ancient 

 rights to the fisheries and trade in these remote regions, 

 and having failed in her efforts, introduced a fixed limit 

 of forty geographical miles from the coast, within which 

 whale-fishing by foreigners was forbidden (see p. 529). 



While Denmark was unsuccessfully endeavouring to assert 

 exclusive rights to the fisheries within a wide extent of water 

 in the northern seas, she was at the same time claiming a much 

 less extensive space along her coasts for purposes of neutrality. 

 Moreover, it may be added that just as in most European 

 countries the cannon-range limit and then the three-mile belt 

 which likewise originated in connection with neutral rights 

 came to be applied as the boundary of the territorial seas for 

 all purposes, so the Danish limit for neutral waters, which was 

 a different one, was also adopted later as the general boundary 

 of the territorial seas by the Scandinavian states. The decree 

 in regard to neutrality was issued in 1745 by the King of 

 Denmark and Norway, and communicated to the foreign 

 consuls, and it forbade all foreign privateers to capture any 

 vessel of the enemy within a distance of one league, of fifteen 

 to a degree of latitude, from the coast or its outlying banks 



1 Daru, Histoire de la Republique de Venise, i. 445 ; Smedley, Sketches of Venetian 

 History, i. 72. See p. 4. When Venice was conquered, the Bucentaur was stripped 

 of her gilding and finery, and, under the name of Hydra, became a prosaic guard- 

 ship, stationed at the mouth of the Lido until 1824, when she was destroyed. 



