586 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



century, few occasions have occurred for the question of the 

 boundary of neutral waters to be raised. In a number of civil 

 cases tried in our courts the three-mile limit has, however, been 

 referred to, either as a ground for the decision, or more usually 

 as a dictum of the judges, as the proper boundary of the terri- 

 torial sea ; but this has been frequently coupled with the quali- 

 fication that it is the assumed distance of the range of guns, 

 or the smallest extent that has been claimed by publicists or 

 states. 1 Some of these cases dealt with the vexed question of 

 bays. 2 One of the most important was tried in 1859, and it 

 referred to the Bristol Channel. An offence was committed on 

 an American vessel within one mile of the coast in Penarth 

 Roads, but where the width from shore to shore is less than 

 ten miles, and Chief Justice Cockburn, in delivering judgment, 

 said, " We are of opinion that, looking at the local situation of 

 this sea, it must be taken to belong to the counties respectively 

 by the shores of which it is bounded ; and the fact of the Holms, 3 

 between which and the shore of the county of Glamorgan, the 



1 E.g. , the case of the Leda, in which Dr Lushington claimed that the term 

 United Kingdom included the waters to a distance of three miles from the 

 shore (Swa., Adm., 40) ; General Iron Screw Company, in which Lord Hatherly 

 said that it was "beyond question that for certain purposes every country may, by 

 the common law of nations, legitimately exercise jurisdiction over that portion of 

 the high seas which lies within three miles from its shores," whether this limit 

 was determined by the range of cannon was not material, since it was clear it 

 extended at any rate to that distance (1 J. and H., 180) ; Whitstable Fishery Case, 

 in which it was said that the soil of the seashore to the distance of three miles from 

 the beach was vested in the crown, and in which Lord Chelmsford observed that 

 "the three-mile limit depends upon a rule of international law, by which every 

 independent state is considered to have territorial property and jurisdiction in the 

 sea which washes their coast within an assumed distance of a cannon-shot from 

 the shore" (11 C.B. (N.S.), 387; 2 H.L.C., 192); the Aniiapolis, in which Dr 

 Lushington said, "Within British jurisdiction, namely, within British territory, 

 and at sea within three miles from the coast" (1 Lush., Adm., 306) ; Rex v. Forty- 

 nine Casks of Brandy, in which Sir John Nicholl said that "as between nation and 

 nation, the territorial right may, by a sort of tacit understanding, be extended to 

 three miles" (3 Haggard, 257) ; Gainmell v. Commissioners Woods and Forests and 

 Lord Advocate, in which Lord Wensleydale referred to the distance of three miles 

 as belonging, by the acknowledged law of nations, to the coast of the country, and 

 " under the dominion of the country by being within cannon range, and so capable 

 of being kept in perpetual possession " (3 MacQueen, H.L., 419). 



2 This subject is treated of by Mr A. H. Charteris, Lecturer in International Law, 

 University of Glasgow, in a paper read before the International Law Association at 

 Berlin in 1906 (Twenty-third Report, 103). 



3 Two small islands in the Channel. 



