94 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



mile rule is, as shown by this treaty, a principle of international 

 law applicable to coasts and should be strictly and systematically 

 applied to bays. 



But the Tribunal is unable to agree with this contention: 



(a) Because admittedly the geographical character of a bay con- 

 tains conditions which concern the interests of the territorial sov- 

 ereign to a more intimate and imj)ortant extent than do those con- 

 nected with the open coast. Thus conditions of national and ter- 

 ritorial integrity, of defence, of commerce and of industry are all 

 vitally concerned with the control of the bays penetrating the 

 national coast line. This interest varies, speaking generally, in pro- 

 portion to the penetration inland of the bay ; but as no principle of 

 international law recognises any specified relation between the con- 

 cavity of the bay and the requirements for control by the territorial 

 sovereignty, this Tribunal is unable to qualify by the application 

 of any new principle its intei'pretation of the treaty of 1818 as ex- 

 cluding bays in general from the strict and systematic application 

 of the three mile rule; nor can this Tribunal take cognisance in this 

 connection of other principles concerning the territorial sovereignty 

 over bays, such as ten mile or twelve mile limits of exclusion based 

 on international acts subsequent to the treaty of 1818 and relating to 

 coasts of a different configuration and conditions of a different 

 character ; 



(b) Because the opinion of jurists and publicists quoted in the 

 proceedings conduce to the opinion that, speaking generally, the 

 three mile rule should not be strictly and systematically applied 

 to bays ; 



(c) Because the treaties referring to these coasts, antedating the 

 treaty of 1818, made special provisions as to bays, such as the treaties 

 of 1686 and 1713 between Great Britain and France, and especially 

 the treaty of 1778 between the United States and France. Likewise 

 Jay's Treaty of 1794, article 25, distinguished bays from the space 

 " within cannon-shot of the coast " in regard to the right of seizure 

 in times of war. If the proposed treaty of 1806 and the treaty of 

 1818 contained no disposition to that effect, the explanation may be 

 found in the fact that the first extended the marginal belt to five 

 miles, and also in the circumstance that the American proposition of 

 1818 in that respect was not limited to " bays," but extended to 

 " chambers formed by headlands " and to " five marine miles from 

 a right line from one headland to another," a proposition which 

 in the times of the Napoleonic wars would have affected to a very 

 large extent the operations of the British navy ; 



(d.) Because it has not been shown by the documents and corre- 

 spondence in evidence here that the application of the three mile rule 

 to bays was present to the minds of the negotiators in 1818, and they 



