The British Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Washington , April 12, 1905 .
seizure of the agnes g. donahue by the uruguayan authorities.
On the 11th of November, 1904, the Agnes G. Donahoe, a Canadian schooner commanded by Captain Ryan, was seized by a Uruguayan ship the Ingeniero, some three-fourths of a mile from shore, and taken to Montevideo, charged with sealing in territorial waters.
The captain maintained that all the seals on board—some 390—had been caught on the high seas, but the Uruguayan Government denied this and stated that, having granted to a private firm the concession of killing seals on the coast, they were obliged to prevent raiding; that the ship had been caught in flagrante delictu close inshore while sealing, and, later, that the ship was guilty of illegal association, robbery, and smuggling.
The captain and crew were therefore confined to the ship pending the finding of the courts.
The defending counsel, Doctor Wilson, repeatedly requested that they should be allowed out on bail, and Mr. Baring, His Majesty’s minister, who was applied to by the Canadian government, also tried to procure their liberation by appealing to the minister for foreign affairs.
The latter, however, replied that the case was in the hands of the courts and could not be interfered with, and it soon became evident that there was a fixed determination on the part of the Uruguayan authorities to make an example of the master and crew of the schooner and establish a precedent for the future. Although the crew were eventually released on the owners’ recognizances, the captain and the vessel are still detained.
Doctor Wilson maintained that the laws of the Republic were silent on the subject of the offense, but his application for a stay of proceedings was repeatedly rejected, and on December 24 Mr. Baring was instructed to remonstrate against further delay in bringing the men to trial and to ask for a definite statement respecting the crime and the law under which the charge was made.
[Page 913]No reply was obtained from the minister for foreign affairs to these questions. In writing to Mr. Baring on January 11, he merely transmitted a variety of documents from the judicial authorities tending to show that the government were compelled by their undertaking of July, 1895, with the private firm holding the concession for killing seals, to protect the sealing, and suggested that the proceeding of the ship amounted to piracy or robbery.
On the 13th of March Mr. Baring, by instruction of Lord Lansdowne, made a further representation to the Uruguayan Government, calling attention to the fact that there is no Uruguayan law prohibiting foreigners from fishing in the territorial waters of the Republic, and that there was consequently no legal justification for the seizure of the vessel and criminal proceedings against the master and crew. He stated that His Majesty’s Government must earnestly remonstrate against the manner in which the case had been conducted, and must urge that the master should be released and the vessel liberated at once, reserving the question of presenting a claim for compensation for the heavy losses to the owners and crew resulting from long delays in the proceedings.
On March 28 Mr. Baring reported that the minister for foreign affairs, in reply to his representation, ignored the demand for the release of the ship and of the captain, and denied that there had been any delay and that any claims could arise in future, as everything had been done legally.
Meanwhile the investigating magistrate has formulated the charges and called upon the judge to sentence the captain of the Agnes G. Donahoe to five years’ imprisonment and the two mates to two years, the offense to be treated as robbery.