438 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 



In June, 1823, the Secretary of State addressed a note to the British 

 minister at Washington, complaining of the seizure of the schooner 

 Charles, and demanding reparation for the indignity offered to the 

 American flag. The answer of the British government was, that the 

 vessel had been found at anchor in a British harbor, which she had 

 entered on a false pretense of avoiding a storm; and had been legally 

 condemned by the vice-admiralty court of New Brunswick, for a 

 breach of the convention of 1818, and of the act of Parliament to 

 carr}' the same into ell'ect. The vessel was subsequently restored. 



In September, 1824, a complaint was made to the British charge 

 d'affaires that several citizens of the State of Maine had been inter- 

 rupted by British cruisers, while engaged in taking and curing fish 

 in the Bay of Fundy; and was accompanied by a similar demand of 

 indemnity and reparation. The British charge d'affaires, in answer, 

 promised to institute an inquiry into the circumstances of the case, 

 invited the United States to a similar proceeding on their part, and 

 closed with a remonstrance against the act of American citizens who, 

 with an armed force, had rescued the seized property from the cus- 

 tody of British officers. 



In January, 1836, the British government became, in its turn, the 

 complainant. Its charge d'affaires at Washington, remonstrated 

 against the encroachments of American citizens upon the fishing 

 grounds secured exclusively to British fishermen by the convention 

 of 1818. The result of this complaint was a circular letter addressed 

 by the Secretary of the Treasury to the officers of customs in districts 

 where vessels are licensed for the fisheries, directing them to impress 

 the crews of fishing vessels with a sense of the treaty obligations of 

 their government, and of the dangers to which they exposed them- 

 selves by encroaching upon British rights. The recent cases of seizure 

 constitute the last instance of alleged violation of rights, and the 

 charge is laid to the British account. The attention of this depart- 

 ment was first called to the subject by a reference by the Treasury 

 of a letter from B. & J. M. Leavitt, of Boston, asking for information 

 as to the existing treaty stipulations regulating the matter. The in- 

 quiry was answered by a reference to the first article of the conven- 

 tion of 1818. On the 3d of July the Secretary of the Treasury re- 

 ferred to the department a communication from the collector of 

 Boston, transmitting a report from the naval officer who had been 

 despatched to Nova Scotia with directions to inquire into the alleged 

 causes of the seizure and detention of American fishing vessels. The 

 report, after alluding in general terms to some of the seizures, refers, 

 with regard to the particulars of four of the cases then pending before 

 the court of vice-admiralty of Halifax, to an abridged statement, 

 furnished by the consular agent of the United States at Yarmouth, 

 of the depositions of the majors and crews of three American fishing 

 schooners, viz: the Independence, the Magnolia, and the Java, 

 and the fishing boat Hart. The statement, with the report accom- 

 panying it, is annexed, and contains the most detailed information in 

 the possession of this department in relation to the " nature and cir- 

 cumstances of the cases." 



According to that statement, the Independence is alleged to have 

 anchored in the Tusket islands, and, while there, hired her nets to 

 an English fisherman, for the purpose of taking fish on shares. The 

 crew state that they were forced to anchor there by stress of weather ; 



