1030 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



in the treaty was not intended to include the whole of the bays on 

 the British coasts. 



"At the beginning of the last century, Great Britain and the 

 United States were putting forward wide claims to jurisdiction over 

 territorial waters, as has already been shown. The case of Delaware 

 Bay and the claims of the United States were fresh in the minds of 

 the American negotiators," &c. 



I shall later come to the specific consideration of these so-called 

 " wide claims " which the distinguished counsel who opened for the 

 Government of Great Britain substituted in the Argument before 

 this Tribunal for a discussion of the very specific question here 

 involved of the want of any assertion of jurisdiction in respect of the 

 fisheries over bodies of water known as bays. 



Counsel, in opening for Great Britain, undertook to establish that 

 Great Britain was asserting wide claims of exclusive maritime juris- 

 diction over the sea generally adjacent to the shores of its posses- 

 sions in the North Atlantic in respect to the fisheries. 



The facts upon which counsel relied to establish this alleged asser- 

 tion of extended jurisdiction, both by the United States and Great 

 Britain, will, as I just stated, be specifically discussed at a later stage; 

 but now I am directly concerned with the general statements made 

 by counsel as to the wide claims of Great Britain, and I read first 

 from p. 242 of the report of the argument of Sir Robert Finlay : 



" because the claims put forward by Great Britain and the recogni- 

 tion of maritime jurisdiction by the United States show that at that 

 time any idea of the claim with regard to a bay being confined to a 

 bay with a six-mile entrance is entirely out of the question." 



And on p. 248 counsel stated : 



" The wide extent of the British claims was well known ;" 

 620 Again, at p. 250 counsel stated: 



" Having regard to the claims which Great Britain at that time put 

 forward, I submit that such a position is absolutely incredible," 



Why, if the Tribunal please, I have just read a statement from Sir 

 Charles Russell that from 1783 down Great Britain never made any 

 wide claim outside of what he called territorial waters. Nor is there 

 any doubt about what Sir Charles Russell meant by territorial waters 

 when he was talking. And I have also read the instructions of Lord 

 Castlereagh to the Commissioners at Ghent in 1814, when they were 

 negotiating the treaty that closed the war of 1812, in which he 

 stated that they must especially take notice of the fact that no claim 

 was asserted against the United States, except that the fishing- vessels 

 of the United States should keep outside the maritime jurisdiction of 

 Great Britain. And later I read the instruction of Lord Bathurst, 

 who, in the absence of Lord Castlereagh on the continent or some- 



