68 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
“MONSTROUS CLAIMS. 
“This Company claims that the waters of Behring’s Sea are within the limits of 
Alaska, and procures the seizure, through subservient Government officers, of every 
vessel that dares to traverse those waters, or is found anywhere therein on a seal- 
hunting voyage. 
51 ‘‘Tt is immaterial to it whether vessels are found in the actual killing of 
seals or where the seals have been killed; the mere presence of the vessels in 
Behring’s Sea seems sufficient evidence to justify their seizure in any part of those 
waters. 
‘In the case of the ‘Ocean Spray,’ which went to the Island of St. Paul in 1876, 
the very stronghold of this Company, provided with all the appliances for killing 
seals and was seized, Judge Deady, of the United States District Court of Oregon, 
aman of unquestionable learning and of high judicial and personal character, held 
(in 4 Saw., 105) that all these preparations, even if an intent could be shown, were 
not a violation of the Act of Congress. This is the only reported adjudicated case, 
and the strongest the Company could have. 
“This vessel deliberately proceeded to, and landed its crew at, the Island of St. 
Paul, yet the Court held that there was no offence;-and when we consider that our 
vessel has been seized going to and returning trom Russian waters, hundreds of 
miles distant from St. Paul and St. George Islands, and forfeited, and its master and 
crew imprisoned, we are left to conjecture that the waters adjacent to the leased 
islands might be stretched to include the whole of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, 
and that the power and rule of this Company extends from these islands to the city 
of Washington. 
“As early as 1872 the Company appealed to the Government to have a Revenue 
cutter stationed at Ounimak Pass, in the Aleutian group, the only safe entrance to 
Behring’s Sea, to prevent American vessels from passing into that sea; but the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, the Hon. George 8. Boutwell, refused, upon the legal ground 
that vessels had a right to go there if they did not kill seals within a marine league 
of the shore. 
“The Act of Congress contemplates this well-established doctrine when it restricts 
the killing of seals to the ‘waters of Alaska Territory’ (section 1956, Revised Stat- 
utes), and further declares, in sections 1961 and 1967, that it is not a crime to kill 
seals in Behring’s Sea unless ‘in the waters adjacent to the Islands of St. Paul and 
St.George.’ ‘Adjacent’ means ‘lying near, close, or contiguous,’ and the waters 
within the marine league of the decisions are the only ‘adjacent waters’ there are. 
But, according to this Company and the officers of the Government, it means a 
stretch of ocean 3,000 miles long and 2,700 wide; and under this theory of ‘adja- 
cency’ the term ‘pirates’ includes all fishing-vessels found in that sea. 
“There never has been a seizure within the waters adjacent to these islands, or 
of Alaska Territory, except the ‘Ocean Spray,’ and that vessel was released. 
“INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS IGNORED. 
“Behring’s Sea is the international highway to the Arctic Ocean, and not the pri- 
vate property of the Alaska Commercial Company, nor of the Government of the 
United States, and the Government could not concede to the Alaska Commercial 
Company any greater territorial right than it possessed itself, and that territorial 
right and jurisdiction ceases and ends at the ‘marine league’ of international law 
from the shore. Beyond this limit the ocean is the common property of the whole 
world, and every animal and fish in itis fere nature, and belongs to him who takes it. 
“This is the doctrine which has come down to us from antiquity and has been 
observed by all people, whether civilized or barbarous, except this Company and 
Government officials of the United States. 
‘CA shipper or vessel-owner of the Pacific coast is in no condition to resist the 
power of an oppressor when his vessel is seized and beached upon an inhospitable 
and lawless shore, his cargo scattered to the four winds of heaven, and his crew 
imprisoned in an inaccessible port. The only additional requisite to make this sys- 
ten’ all-powerful seems to be the annexing of Siberia to the lease, and the trans- 
porting of these so-called pirates to its penal mines. The same theory of ‘adjacency’ 
would certainly apply. 
“Phrough this policy of Government officers permitting this Company to extend 
its powers under the lease, the Government will surely lose in the end perhaps the 
greatest and most profitable industry in the world, namely, the seal fisheries of 
Alaska. 
“The fishery question now agitating the New England States, and the interests 
involved there, are a mere bagatelle to those of the Alaska fisheries. 
“Tt is charged that our American fishermen are exterminating the seals in Beh- 
ring’s Sea, and they have ‘piratically,’ during the season of 1886, captured 200,000 
seals in excess of the number authorized to be taken by the Alaska Commercial 
Company at the islands. This is the statement in a letter to a San Francisco paper, 
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