Its Imperial Tin porta nee. 11 



the bay, or other indentation of the British coasts. In tlie 

 Franconian case,* which came before the British Courts in 1*^76, 

 the question involved was whether or not a foreigner command- 

 ing a foreign vessel could legally be convicted of manslaughter 

 committed whilst sailing by the external coast of England, 

 within three miles from the shore, in the prosecution of a voyage 

 from one foreign port to another. The Court, by a majority of 

 seven judges to six, held the conviction bad on the ground that 

 the jurisdiction of the Common Law Courts extended only to 

 offences committed within the realm, and that at Common Law 

 such realm did not extend on the external coasts beyond low- 

 water mark. None of the judges, however, doubted that Parlia- 

 ment had power to extend the laws of the realm to a zone of 

 three miles around the outer coast, if it saw fit to do so. The 

 Lord Chief Justice of England, by whose casting judgment the 

 conviction was quashed, not only guarded himself expressly 

 against being understood as throwing any doubt whatever upon 

 the jurisdiction of the Courts over inland or territorial waters, but 

 emphatically affirmed such jurisdiction. " If an offence was 

 committed/' he said, "in a bay, gulf, or estuary, i nter fauces 

 terrcv, the Common Law would deal with it because the parts of 

 the sea so circumstanced were held to be within the body of the 

 adjacent county or counties." In another case, which was 

 decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Councilt in 1877, 

 the question arose between two telegraph companies whether 

 Conception Bay in Newfoundland (which is rather more than 

 twenty miles wide at its mouth and runs inland between forty and 

 fifty miles) was within British waters or a part of the high seas. 

 One of the companies laid a cable and buoys within the bay at 

 a distance of more than three miles from the shore, and the rival 

 company contended that the former had infringed rights 

 granted to them by the Legislature of Newfoundland. The 

 Judicial Committee held that Conception Bay was within the 

 territorial dominion of Great Britain. All bodies of water or 

 inlets inter faiices temv, being then clearly within the terri- 

 torial jurisdiction of England and her dependencies, it follows 

 that when the Americans by the Convention of 1818 explicitly 

 renounced all liberty previously enjoyed to fish "on or within 

 three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or har- 

 bours of His Britannic Majesty's dominions," they gave U[) 

 any pretensions they muy previously have had, and confined 



* The Queen v. Keyn, L. R. 2 Ex. Div. 63. 



t The Direct United States Cable Co. (Limited), Appellants, i'. The Aiiijflo- 

 Aniericau Telcii^raph Co. (Limited) and other llespoiidents, L. R. App. Cases, 



v(d. ii.:i'JJ., 



b3 



