Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Address of the President to Congress December 8, 1914

File No. 812.00/13491.

Admiral Fiske to the Secretary of the Navy.

Navy Department,
Washington , April 13, 1914 .

To the Secretary of the Navy:

1. In obedience to your order, I have the following comment to make as to the communication from the Mexican Sub-Secretary of State.⁸ I do this after consultation with the General Board.

2. The boat from the Dolphin, to which the men belonged who were arrested in Tampico, was sent ashore on duty; and the men in the boat, and the men standing on the dock when arrested, were there on duty. They were there officially and not unofficially.

3. It is a recognized principle of international law that public national vessels carry with them an element of extraterritoriality, by which they are considered as part of the country to which they belong. This extends to the boats of public vessels. For this reason, the officers and crews of such national ships, and of their boats, are included in the extraterritorial protection, and are immune from ordinary municipal interference or arrest while in such ships or boats.

4. This does not mean that officers and men of these national vessels when on shore on unofficial matters, even if in uniform, are immune from hindrance or arrest; but it does mean that while on board their ships, or in their boats, they are absolutely immune, in much the same way as that in which an ambassador is immune within his embassy.

5. For this reason, it was a direct violation of international law that the two men who were in the whaleboat of the Dolphin should have been taken out of the boat by the armed soldiers in Tampico. Even if they had committed offenses, the remedy would not have been to take them out of the boat or to arrest them, but to report them to their own superior officers.

6. The marching of them and the other members of the party, including a commissioned officer, through the streets of the city, was an offensive and unnecessary act; it was not, however, so clearly a violation of international law as was the forcible removal of the two men from the boat. Yet it cannot be excused on the ground taken by the Sub-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, because, without accomplishing any useful purpose whatever, it subjected an officer and several enlisted men of our Navy to public and unnecessary humiliation, without provocation, while they were officially on shore in uniform.

7. The Paymaster and the members of the crew did not know that they had landed at a place where it was prohibited to land. Had they known, it is inconceivable that they would have gone there. They were entirely unarmed; and no reason is apparent why they should have deliberately gone, openly and in broad daylight, to a place where they were prohibited to go, when armed forces of Mexicans in uniform were in the vicinity.

8. It is a fact that the visit of the boat was a perfectly innocent visit, made in good faith and on duty—to get gasoline. But even if it had been a piece of intentional wrongdoing and in violation of a known prohibition, a sufficient remedy on the part of the Mexicans would have been to warn them against landing. This they could have done, and their act would have been perfectly proper and within their rights.

9. Even if the boat went alongside the dock, and even if members of the crew got out of the boat, before the authorities noticed it, all useful purposes would have been accomplished if the Mexicans had requested the Paymaster to recall his men and return with them to their ship. This also they could have done and kept entirely within their rights.

10. Instead of doing this, however, the Mexicans committed the double intentional wrong of taking men, in uniform, out of a man-of-war’s boat flying the flag of the United States, and also marching them and others, including a commissioned officer, through the streets of the city, under arrest.

11. Prior to writing this letter, the following authorities have been consulted: Moore, International Law Digest; Oppenheim, International Law; Hall, International Law, 5th edition; Lawrence, Principles of International Law.

B. A. Fiske

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8. Transmitted in Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s No. 847 of April 12.