GENERAL ADOPTION OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 577 



in such cases. It is very doubtful whether, as the American 

 Government implied in 1806, the boundaries of the King's 

 Chambers had retained their validity at the beginning of 

 last century. There seems to be no evidence that they 

 were enforced during the eighteenth century, or even in the 

 closing years of the seventeenth, possibly because occasions 

 to test the point had become rare. But it is perhaps more 

 probable that the claim to the King's Chambers was allowed 

 gradually to die out, and that the deliberate omission of 

 any reference to them in the later proclamations of Charles II. 

 (see p. 554) foreshadowed this change in practice. It is clear 

 at all events that long before the end of the eighteenth 

 century it was well established that a vessel captured by one 

 belligerent from another belligerent in a port of a neutral 

 state or within the actual reach of cannon was not good 

 prize. 1 The next step was to give effect to the same prin- 

 ciple, whether the place was actually within the range of a 

 fort or not. 



The decisions which introduced the three-mile limit into 

 English jurisprudence were those of Sir William Scott (after- 

 wards Lord Stowell) at the beginning of last century. In 

 1800 and 1801 this great authority adopted both the gunshot 

 limit and the distance of three miles as its equivalent for 

 the boundary of neutral waters, in deciding the well-known 

 cases of the Twee Gebroeders. It was these decisions of 

 Lord Stowell's which introduced the three - mile limit into 

 English jurisprudence. The cases arose from the capture 

 of certain vessels in 1799, by the boats of a British man-of- 

 war, in the Groningen - Watt, between East Friesland and 

 the island of Borkum, in the belief that they were bound 

 from Hamburg to Amsterdam, which was then blockaded by 

 the British; and it was claimed by the King of Prussia that 

 the capture was made within the territory of that state. In 

 deciding the first case, 2 Lord Stowell found that the capturing 



1 The High Court of Admiralty, for instance, decided in 1760 that a French 

 vessel taken by an English privateer at Hayti was not good prize, as it had been 

 attacked while in a port belonging to the King of Spain, "within reach of his 

 cannon and under his protection " (Marsden, Report of Cases determined by the 

 High Court of Admiralty, 175). 



2 There were two cases of Twee Gebroeders the first (Alberts, master) tried on 

 29th July 1800 ; the second (Northolt, master) tried on 27th November 1801. 



2o 



