File No. 763.72111/4598
The Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Treasury ( McAdoo)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of March 3 enclosing a copy of a telegram, addressed to the Honorable Hoke Smith by the Strachan Shipping Co., complaining of the delay because of the requirement for special authorization for clearance of armed merchant vessels which call at Charleston merely for bunker coal.1
You call attention also to delays at other ports where vessels call for coal, resulting from the requirement for special authorization to clear.
I regret that it does not seem desirable to dispense with these reports, notwithstanding the provision of Article 110 of the customs [Page 553] regulations of 1915 which you cite. With regard to the coaling at Charleston of vessels formerly cleared at Brunswick, however, the following plan may serve to obviate the delay complained of:
The collector at Brunswick, Ga., when making his report on an armed merchant vessel to your Department, shall make an additional copy and forward it at the same time to the collector at Charleston. When the vessel is cleared from Brunswick, the collector at Charleston will know that the report, a copy of which he has, is approved, and if upon examination of the vessel at his port he finds no material change, he may allow the vessel to depart without submitting the facts of his examination to Washington and awaiting special authorization.
This plan may also be applicable to some other ports, but I have been unable to devise any plan which will dispense with reports from collectors at coaling ports, which are not ports of destination.
I have [etc.]
Third Assistant Secretary
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