538 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



particular the two main aspects it presents, first, the actual 

 practice of nations on the one hand, and, second, the opinions 

 of the accredited writers on international law. 



The sovereignty over the so-called territorial sea has some- 

 times been regarded as the direct remnant of a sovereignty 

 which was previously asserted by particular nations over 

 whole seas or large parts of them. 1 This is true in a general 

 sense, but in tracing the historical evolution of the territorial 

 waters it is found that the steps by which the transference 

 was effected varied in different cases. The pretensions of 

 Denmark, for example, to a wide dominion over the Norwegian 

 Sea and the North Atlantic, were slowly curtailed by gradual 

 concessions to the opposition of other Powers, so that the ex- 

 tensive territorial waters at present pertaining to Norway may 

 be looked upon as the residuum of the ancient claim. The 

 exclusive rights have persisted, while the area over which they 

 are exercised has dwindled. In like manner, the equally ex- 

 tensive territorial waters of Sweden may be regarded as an 

 abridgment of her old claims in the Baltic. The same process 

 may have operated in the case of Spain and Portugal, both of 

 which Powers now claim maritime sovereignty to a distance 

 of six miles from their coasts; but here the successive stages 

 of contraction are not obvious. The territorial sea now held 

 to pertain to Great Britain, so far as it has been defined, did 

 not originate in this way, by direct descent from the old 

 claim to the dominion of the British seas. That claim simply 

 died out and vanished in the lapse of time, without apparently 

 leaving a single juridical or international right behind it. The 

 British territorial waters, as usually defined, are of modern 

 origin, and were derived from the international jurisprudence 

 of the Continent, and especially from the doctrine of Bynkers- 

 hoek, to be referred to later. 



Even during the time when some nations were asserting a 

 wide maritime dominion, and other nations were opposing such 

 pretensions, there was a general recognition that every mari- 

 time state was entitled to exercise jurisdiction over some extent 

 of the neighbouring sea. This was admitted by the most 

 thoroughgoing advocates of the mare liberum, as by Grotius 

 himself, and it was acknowledged by the common usage of 



1 Maine, International Law, 77. 



