GENERAL ADOPTION OF THE THREE-MILE LIMIT 589 



than twenty miles wide between the headlands and from forty 

 to fifty miles in length. It was decided by the Judicial Com- 

 mittee of the Privy Council in 1877 that it was a British bay 

 and part of the territorial waters of Newfoundland. The 

 decision was based partly on the configuration of the bay, but 

 mainly on the evidence that the British Government had for a 

 long time exercised dominion over it, which had been acquiesced 

 in by other nations, and the Legislature had by Acts of 

 Parliament declared it to be British territory. 1 Lord Black- 

 burn, in delivering judgment, said that there was a universal 

 agreement among writers on international jurisprudence that 

 harbours, estuaries, and bays, landlocked, belong to the terri- 

 tory of the nation which possesses the shores round them, but 

 no agreement existed as to what is the rule to determine what 



o 



is a " bay " for this purpose. " It seems generally agreed," he 

 continued, "that where the configuration and dimensions of 

 the bay are such as to show that the nation occupying the 

 adjoining coasts also occupies the bay, it is part of the terri- 

 tory," most of the writers referring to defensibility from the 

 shore as the test of occupation. But the judgment was founded 

 on the principle above stated. 



With regard to jurisdiction over foreigners in the waters 

 along our coasts, it is surprising that until quite recently 

 there was no statutory enactment or international agree- 

 ment defining the extent of that jurisdiction. Even in 

 certain statutes in which the territorial waters are specially 

 mentioned their boundaries are not defined, Thus, the pro- 

 visions of the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870, 2 which was 

 passed for purposes of neutrality in the war between France 

 and Germany, were declared by the second section to ex- 

 tend "to all the dominions of Her Majesty, including the 

 adjacent territorial waters " ; and the fourteenth section pro- 

 vided that any ship captured during the war between other 

 nations when Great Britain was neutral, " within the territorial 

 jurisdiction of Her Majesty, in violation of the neutrality of 

 this realm," &c., would be illegal ; yet, in the interpretation 

 clause no definition is given of the meaning or extent of " the 



1 The Direct United States Cable Company v. the Anglo-American Telegraph 

 Company, Privy Council, 1877. Law Reports, Appeal Cases, ii. 394. 



2 33 & 34 Viet., c. 90. 



