Lord Lyons to Mr. Seward.
Sir: Her Majesty’s government have taken into consideration the note which you addressed on the 21st May last to Monsieur Tassara, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the Queen of Spain, and which you requested me to receive as conveying the opinions of the government of the United States, upon the claims presented in behalf of British subjects, on account of the outrage committed on the “Blanche” off the coast of Cuba.
Her Majesty’s government have directed me to state to you, in reply, that it is to be observed that the intentional violation of the neutral waters of Spain by the United States Commander Hunter is, at least, recognized, not only by the terms of your note, but by the dismissal of the officer who was guilty of it from the service of the United States.
With respect, however, to that part of the note in which you mention the evidence taken before the United States court-martial, and to the conclusions which you found upon it. Her Majesty’s government, having taken no part in those proceedings, cannot admit that the evidence formerly laid before the United States government by her Majesty’s government, as to the circumstance of the seizure and destruction of the vessel, is at all displaced by those proceedings; and her Majesty’s government still adhere to the opinion that the “Blanche,” thus seized in plain and intentional violation of international law, was also destroyed by the wrong-doers upon that occasion.
In the presence of contradictory statements on the one side and on the other, with reference to this part of the subject, it seems to her Majesty’s government sufficient to remark that the destruction of the vessel would certainly never have occurred but for the wrongful and violent attempt of Commander Hunter to seize her, in avowed contempt of international law, within Spanish waters; that even if she were actually fired, under these circumstances, by her own crew, the responsibility of the wrong-doer, for this consequence of his unlawful act, would remain the same, and that no presumption can be admitted as to any doubtful question of fact in favor of the aggressors in such a case. The practical question appears to her Majesty’s government to be, whether the United States government is internationally responsible for the loss sustained by the injured parties, and her Majesty’s government cannot treat this as an open or doubtful question.
A subject remains which is, in the opinion of her Majesty’s government, of the gravest importance. Her Majesty’s government observe that you express [Page 681] your formal opinion that the Blanche was “an American vessel lawfully belonging to American citizens, from whom she had been piratically taken by armed insurgents of the United States, and that she was in possession of such insurgents ataud the time of her destruction, and that her cargo also belonged not to British subjects but to such insurgents.”
Her Majesty’s government have in vain endeavored to discover the grounds on which you rest this assertion, either from your note to Monsieur Tassara, of the 21st ultimo, itself, or from the correspondence and proceedings of the courtartial on Captain Hunter, as printed by the authority of the United States government. By the documents (at pages 134 to 138, inclusive, of the printed correspondence) it clearly appears that the ship in question, which had previously been navigated as confederate property, under the name of the General Rusk, was, on the 31st July, 1862, transferred at Havana, by bill of sale, under a regular power of attorney, from W. L. Smith, of Galveston, her confederate owner, to Mr. George Wigg, of Liverpool, a British subject, for the valuable consideration of fifty thousand dollars; and that she received on the same day from the British consul at Havana a temporary certificate of registry as a British ship, in accordance with the provisions of the merchant shipping act, 17 and 18 Victoria, ch. 104, sec. 54.
It further appears that she was, from that time until she was destroyed, navigated under the name of the Blanche, as a British ship with British papers. Nothing whatever appears in the printed correspondence, or in any other of the documents forwarded to her Majesty’s government, as to her prior history; and if at any earlier period she was owned by citizens of the United States, there is a total absence of particulars and of evidence as to the fact of such ownership; and also as to the circumstances under which the ship afterwards came into the hands of W. L. Smith, who sold her to her British owner.
The papers referred to, and the actual possession of the ship under them, establish a clear case of British ownership, which at present there appears to be nothing whatever, beyond the bare assertion contained in your note, to displace; and her Majesty’s government cannot for a moment acquiesce upon this bare assertion, in the refusal of the United States government to recognize such British ownership, and the claims to compensation thence arising.
Her Majesty’s government observe, further, that in the proceedings before the court-martial no evidence was offered on this subject, except the statements, almost entirely hearsay, of a single witness, James Speirs, who appears to have been a fireman on board the Blanche, and who took upon himself to state his belief as to the nationality of the captain, officers and crew, making out the captain to be, “as he understood,” an American, and the rest of the crew men of various nations, with only one Englishman and three Irishmen. In answer to questions put to him he added, that “he had heard it said” that “before she began to run the blockade she was a rebel gunboat;” that “he had heard it said” she was owned by a man of the name of Morgan, in New York—he “heard this while on board of her;” and he gave an account of a transaction which he represented to have taken place while she was at Port Lavaca, in Texas, which, if true, amounted to no more than this, that some confederate soldiers there took temporary possession of her, turning out her captain and crew and stores, with the view to make use of her for some warlike purpose, and that after keeping such possession for a week they gave her up again to the crew, who then proceeded to finish her lading with a cargo of cotton, (printed correspondence, pp. 313, 314.)
Her Majesty’s government deem it impossible that any conclusion can be built upon this “evidence,” if such it can be called, in opposition to the ship’s papers and to her British register. Still less can they suppose that the United States government adopts the argument used by Commander Hunter in his defence, (printed correspondence, page 339,) that this was not a British ship; because [Page 682] the act of the British Parliament, recognized by our Department of State as the one in force on the subject of provisional register, requires that the captain and three-fourths of the crew be native-born British subjects. Her Majesty’s govvernment presume that Commander Hunter was then referring to the act 12 and 13 Victoria, cap. 29, sec. 7, in ignorance that this statute had been repealed by the act 17 and 18 Victoria, cap. 120, and that the merchant shipping act 17 and 18 Victoria, cap. 104, (sections 17 to 54,) contains no similar requirements.
In the absence of any explanation of the real grounds on which the British ownership of the Blanche is disputed in your note, her Majesty’s government can only conjecture that you may possibly be proceeding upon the same ground to which you made allusion in a conversation which I had the honor to hold with you in the month of December last, and that the facts on which your allegation is founded may, on further explanation, prove to be that this vessel, having been originally owned in the United States, was captured by the so-called confederates, and after being regularly condemned as lawful prize by a confederate prize court, was sold to the person by whom she was afterwards transferred to her present British owners. This would imply that the United States government refuses to recognize the validity of any sale made under a decree of a confederate prize court, and her Majesty’s government observe that the same point seems to be indicated by that part of Commander Hunter’s defence in which he suggested, for the decision of the court-martial, whether a transfer made by an insurgent in Havana could consistently with existing treaty provisions, transfer stolen American property to a British subject.
It being (as I have more than once, and especially in a conversation which took place in the month of March last, had the honor to state to you verbally) impossible for her Majesty’s government to acquiesce in a pretension which they regard as contrary to the clearest principles of international law, they think it indispensably necessary that the title of the British purchaser of the Blanche should be maintained, and the question promptly brought to a distinct issue. The pretension would, in the opinion of her Majesty’s government, amount to this, that the government of the United States, while it claimed from all neutral states the rights, would at the same time refuse to acknowledge the corresponding obligations of a belligerent power.
Having, in obedience to the commands of her Majesty’s government, done myself the honor to address to you the foregoing representation, I beg you to accept the assurance of the high consideration with which I am, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, &c., &c.