Thomas Wemyss Fulton

“ But all the efforts made in the reign of James, and indeed throughout the whole century, to form a great national fishery on the model of the Dutch completely failed. It required nearly two centuries of experience, and the squandering of vast sums of money, to teach the people that a great industry could not be suddenly created in this way by servile imitation of a system not suited to the natural circumstances of the case. It was chiefly by the gradual evolution of the Scottish herring-boat, and not by the building of busses, that the herring industry was wrested from the Dutch. ”

“ James had offered them a bare license for liberty to fish; Charles was to offer them safety and security as well, and the depredations which the Dunkirk privateers had committed on the herring-busses were to be used as an impressive argument to convince them of the benefits they would receive from his protection. The privateers had driven them from the fishing, even in sight of English harbours, by which the king was prejudiced both in honour and interest; but if they accepted his licenses he might feel justified in drawing his sword in their defence, in spite of any league or treaty. ”

“ On strictly selfish grounds, and for immediate profit, it is doubtless justifiable to make every fishing-bank, wherever it is situated, available for the enterprise of British capital, irrespective of the interests of the inhabitants of the adjoining coast, if that can be managed. If, indeed, the resources of the sea were inexhaustible,—if it was impossible for the operations of man to diminish the abundance of fish,—then no limit of exclusive fishing would be necessary: only such regulations would be required as would enable fishing operations to be conducted in an orderly manner. ”

“ They were branded as the common enemy to all monarchies, and especially to that of England, “their only competitor for trade and power at sea,” who alone stood in their way to a universal empire as great as Rome. They had, he said, slighted all negotiations and refused all cessation of hostilities; and the king, he claimed, in entering on the war had only carried out the maxims of the Parliament which had advised the last war, and had then judged it necessary to extirpate the Dutch, laying it down as an eternal maxim, “delenda est Carthago, that government is to be brought down.” ”

“ But what proved most attractive was the notion which had haunted men’s minds since the time of the Great Queen, and had always eluded realisation. Charles became convinced that the formation of a grand national fishery association would wrest from the Dutch their predominance in the fisheries, drive their busses from our seas, and transfer to the English people the herring-fishing, with all the blessings which flowed from it—commerce, wealth, and maritime power. ”

“ The only true boundary of the territorial sea is, he says, the range of guns from the coast, Bynkershoek’s aphorism—terræ dominium finitur ubi finitur armorum vis—forming the only legal and rational foundation for the delimitation. Within the zone so determined the bordering state has exclusive sovereignty and dominion, and the exclusive right of fishing. The limit of the territorial waters ought therefore to change with the modifications in the range of cannon. If at one time the reach of guns was three miles, then the extent of the territorial sea at that time was only three miles. ”

“ It is pitiful to read of the proceedings of the great ship-money fleets, created under circumstances so memorable in English history, roaming about the Channel in their vain attempts to compel the French men-of-war to strike their flags, and in the North Sea forcing the king’s licenses on the poor Dutch herring fishermen. The Earl of Northumberland 12 succeeded in the latter mission, against which the Dutch Government strongly protested, and there is no doubt that if the policy had been persisted in, the first Dutch war would have been antedated by some fifteen years. ”

“ If and when another maritime war unfortunately breaks out, it would be absurd to suppose that the neutral Powers within the sphere of possible operations would be content with a three-mile limit to safeguard the security of their coasts. As provided for in the rules drawn up by the Institute of International Law, their duty would be to prohibit all hostilities within such distance of their coasts as would render them secure, and this in turn would involve the immunity from capture within the same space of the merchant vessels of one of the belligerents by the vessels of the other. ”

“ On the 19th May, at the very moment when the Dutch ambassadors were conveying their new instructions to the English commissioners, Tromp and Blake were engaged in furious battle in the Straits of Dover about that very matter which the States-General had found to be “so delicate”—the striking of the flag. The long-impending struggle engendered by years of mutual jealousy and commercial rivalry had now come suddenly. The claim of England to the sovereignty of the sea was to be decided, in the words of Sir Philip Meadows, by a longer weapon than a pen. ”

“ He concludes his famous book in the following words: “It is certainly true, according to the mass of evidence set forth above, that the very shores or ports of the neighbouring sovereigns on the other side of the sea are the bounds of the maritime dominion of Britain, to the southwards and eastwards; but in the open and vast ocean to the north and west they are to be placed at the farthest extent of the most spacious seas which are possessed by the English, Scots, and Irish.” ”

“ The States, in truth, had totally different aims from the Commonwealth. They were thinking about their commerce, their navigation, and their fisheries, rather than about the repression of “rebels”; and they desired that their alliance with England should confirm and extend the benefits conferred upon them in these respects by the old treaty. The Intercursus Magnus had for generations been the sheet-anchor of Dutch policy towards England. It gave them the utmost freedom of commercial intercourse, and complete liberty of 387 fishing on the English coasts. ”

“ While the general movement of opinion and practice in modern times has thus been from the mare clausum to the mare liberum—from the sea held to be appropriated by particular nations to the sea under no sovereignty, but free and open to all for all purposes,—there has been another movement in the opposite direction, by which the exclusive rights of maritime states in the waters immediately adjoining their coasts have come to be more clearly recognised and definitely incorporated in international law. ”

“ Very soon, however, the claims of other Powers to maritime sovereignty—of Denmark, Venice, England—were similarly assailed, and the controversy became general. It may be noted that those who took part in it on the one side or the other, including some of the most learned men of their age, were in large measure inspired by patriotic motives. National interests as much as lofty ethics or legal principles were at its root. Even Grotius, notwithstanding his impassioned appeal to the conscience of the world for the liberty of the sea and the freedom of commerce, was not exempt from this weakness. ”

“ It is difficult, he states elsewhere, to draw any precise conclusion, amidst the variety of opinion, as to the distance to which a state may lawfully extend its exclusive dominion over the sea adjoining its territories, and beyond harbours, gulfs, bays, and estuaries, where its jurisdiction unquestionably extends. “All that can reasonably be asserted is, that the dominion of the sovereign of the shore over the contiguous sea extends as far as is requisite for his safety, and for some lawful end. A more extended dominion must rest entirely upon force and maritime supremacy. ”

“ What would be the fate of the convention during war, in which one or two of the Governments joining in it should be belligerents? Would the fishery cruisers of the Powers concerned merely retire from the North Sea and leave fishermen of their nationality without protection or help? He recommended that the conference should adopt the principle that fishing-boats, bonâ fide engaged in fishing, should be declared neutral. ”

“ It was his happy fortune that the cause he publicly advocated was equally in conformity with the growing spirit of liberty and the immediate interests of the United Provinces. Only four years later, when the Dutch had obtained a footing in the East Indies in spite of the Portuguese, they in turn wished to exclude the English from any share in the trade with that opulent region: they did not want any freedom of commerce that might tell against themselves. ”

“ Equally impressive evidence of the lawlessness that then reigned on the sea, and of the inability to deal with it effectively, was furnished by the flagrant violation of English ports and roadsteads, by the Dutch as well as the Dunkirkers, who waged incessant war with one another. The herring-busses and merchant vessels of the former were frequently captured, rifled, and burned by the privateers, and when the commander of a Dutch man-of-war had a chance of destroying one of the pests, he was not always deterred from vengeance by the Dunkirker taking refuge in English waters ”

“ The course upon which Charles had now embarked in reference 293 to foreign fishermen was a revival of the policy of the “assize-herring” of James. No foreigner was to be allowed to fish in the British seas without obtaining, and paying for, a license from the king. James, as we have seen, demanded his right in a pettifogging way, sending a scarcely-armed and half-dismantled pinnace among the busses, with a lawyer on board, to ask the tribute in fair and gentle words, and if refused “to take out instruments upon the said refusal.” ”

“ The Channel formed the great avenue of commerce between the north and south of Europe. The merchant vessels from Venice, Genoa, and the Mediterranean, from Spain and France, passed northwards through it on their way to Flanders and the Baltic, and those from the Hanseatic towns and northern parts had in like manner to traverse it in their southern voyages. The Channel was thus crowded with shipping in summer, and the nation which commanded it had the power of interrupting the commerce of other nations, and consequently retained a potent political weapon in its hands. ”

“ On 3rd August Lindsey’s fleet returned 270 to the Downs for revictualling, what remained of the victuals on board being very bad,—“the beef is so extremely tainted,” he had written on 21st July, “that when the shifter stirs it, the scent over all the ship is enough to breed a contagion.” No sooner was he in the Downs than news came that the French squadron had come back to the English coast, twenty-six sail of them having been seen about the Lizard. “They haunt us like a shadow,” murmured the Admiral from his anchorage, “flying when we pursue, and following when we retreat.” ”

“ It was against the Dutch that the striking of the flag was most thoroughly enforced, and one cannot but admire the patience and restraint they exhibited under great provocation. The French and Swedes avoided giving the salute as much as they could. As the century wore on, the English exaction on this point grew more outrageous. Foreign ships of war were forced to strike on their own coast even to our royal yachts, and the Hollanders were asked to strike not merely in the British seas, but wherever they were encountered. ”

“ The fish in the sea, as Dr Nansen has said, are not the property of any particular nation. They are, if the word may be used, international, and it would therefore be as just as it would be auspicious if all such questions were dealt with in a spirit of international brotherhood, with due regard to the interests of the coast population on the one hand, and the legitimate rights of the enterprising fishermen from other nations on the other. ”