THE FUR-SEALS AND THE BERING SEA AWARD 59 



British Columbian ports were seized, through orders from 

 Washington, by American revenue cutters, and afterward 

 condemned in libel proceedings at Sitka. These captures 

 had been made in what their masters maintained to be the 

 open high seas, i.e. outside the ordinary three-mile limit 

 of marine jurisdiction. The case of the sealing schooner 

 W. P. Sayward was appealed by her owners, and eventually 

 reached the United States Supreme Court, where, as a test case 

 for all the other vessels similarly libelled, it was expected to 

 obtain a definition of the term, "high seas." The case was 

 dismissed in Washington upon a technicality, and no decision 

 upon its merits was rendered. The owners of the condemned 

 vessels were, nevertheless, determined to obtain redress, and 

 the matter of damages for wrongful seizure and confiscation 

 by the United States authorities having been taken up by 

 the British Government, the question drifted into diplomatic 

 channels and became a part of the greater " Bering Sea con- 

 troversy." 



When it was finally agreed to arbitrate the whole ques- 

 tion, the claims of these Canadian shipowners naturally 

 came forward for recognition by the tribunal. In the con- 

 vention of February 29, 1892, with Great Britain, in which 

 the jurisdictional rights of the United States in Bering Sea. 

 waters were submitted to a tribunal of arbitration, it was 

 stipulated that either party might submit to the arbitrators 

 any question of fact " involved in said claims and ask for a 

 finding thereon." The question of the amount of liability 

 of either government on the facts found was, however, left 

 subject to further negotiations. 



The British agents accordingly presented to the arbitrators 

 at Paris all the facts in connection with the confiscation by 

 the United States of the Canadian sealing vessels. These 

 facts, which gave the exact locality of each vessel when 

 captured, its distance from shore, the number of skins 

 on board, etc., were agreed to by the United States agents, 

 and the arbitrators unanimously found the same to be true. 

 With the facts in each particular case thus accepted by both 

 the British and the American agents, and the jurisdiction of 



