for sending off men from different parts of the bay, who could be shipped on board the Shenandoah either before or immediately after she had passed this narrow entrance. There was no British vessel of war at or near Melbourne to which the duty of watching or controlling the movements of the vessel could be assigned. The legal advisers of the colonial government, when consulted on the question, had declared that they were not prepared to advise that the execution of a warrant on board of her could properly be enforced at all hazards; and this opinion was afterward confirmed by that of the law-officers of the Crown in England. All, therefore, that could be done was to enjoin such supervision as could be exercised by the water-police of the port while the Shenandoah was at anchor, and to give orders to the pilot not to allow any boat to come alongside, or any person to come on board, from the time of her weighing anchor till he left her.3 With regard to the first of these two

measures it is not difficult to perceive that to keep effectual watch [97] *over a vessel which is shipping coals and stores in a harbor

from two to three miles wide at the place where she is anchored, in the midst of some two hundred or more vessels of every kind, must be no easy matter, even if a larger force were employed than could be available for the purpose on this occasion. With regard to the latter precaution it is evident that everything must depend on the good faith of the pilot, and his ability to carry out his instructions. After the Shenandoah had left Melbourne, it became a matter of public report that some men had joined her before her departure, and the number, which was no doubt much exaggerated, was stated to be as high as fifty or sixty. The inquiries made afterward by the police resulted in the identification of some eighteen or twenty persons altogether, who had left the colony and were believed to be on board of the ship. Of these it appeared that seven had been employed in shipping coals, and they went on board in the night or early morning before her departure, on the pretense of getting paid for their work, but did not return. It further appeared that, about 9 o'clock on the night of the 17th of February, some men had been collected on the railway-pier of Sandridge, a suburb of Melbourne. The pier in question is the terminus of a railway from the town of Melbourne, and there is a communication by a steam-ferry to Williamstown, which is on the opposite side of the bay, about two and one-half miles distant, and where the patent slip and the station of the water-police are situated. The Shenandoah was at anchor in the bay between Williamstown and Sandridge. From the statement of one of the boatmen employed, the men in question must have dispersed into some wooded land a short distance off at the time when the boat of the water-police came round to that part of the har bor, and thus avoided observation. After the boat had rowed off to the opposite side the men seem to have returned in small parties, and gone off from the pier in watermen's boats, which put them on board the Shenandoah. How many of them were part of the original crew returning to the vessel from the shore, and whether any were new hands, there is nothing to show. The police constable on duty saw the boats after they had started and when they were returning, but had of course no means of investigating this question. It seems indeed. from the wording of his report, as though the darkness or the distance prevented his seeing whether the boats did or did not actually go to the

vessel; all that is stated is that they went in that direction. A man of the name of Robbins went up to the American consulate, where he arrived about 11 o'clock at night, and stated what was taking place. The American consul sent him back to give information to the waterpolice at Williamstown, a distance in all about five miles by land and water, where he must have arrived too late for any interference or inquiry.1

At about 5 o'clock the same afternoon, another man, of the name of Forbes had come to the American consul with a statement that he had seen five men at Sandridge, one of whom had told him that they were going out in a vessel called the Maria Ross, to join the Shenandoah when she got into the open sea beyond the jurisdiction of the port. The consul took the man to the office of the Crown law-officers, which had been closed some time before, but where he met the Crown solicitor, who had accidentally returned. It does not fall within the powers or duties of that officer to take depositions or issue warrants, and he referred the consul to a magistrate as the proper person to go to. The consul then proceeded to the Houses of Parliament, and placed the matter before the attorney-general, who offered to lay the matter before the government if furnished with an affidavit. Instead of complying with this suggestion, the consul applied to the chief of police, who naturally declined to act without a warrant, but suggested, as the Crown solicitor had done, that the consul should apply to a magistrate for the purpose. The consul accordingly went on to a police magistrate in Melbourne. This latter, after examining Forbes, did not feel justified in granting a warrant on such testimony alone, and he advised that application should be made to the water police at Williamstown, who might be able to furnish corroborative evidence. This advice the consul did not think fit to act upon. He returned home, took the man's deposition himself, and determined to forward it to the attorney-general, to be laid before the government, but he did not do this until the following morning, after both the Shenandoah and the Maria Ross had sailed. It is not true that (as alleged in the case of the United States) "he could get no one to attend to his representations." On the contrary, they received, according to his own evidence, "patient" attention from the attorney-general, as well as from the magistrate to whom he had recourse, and they advised him what to do; he did not follow that advice, and he is certainly more justly chargeable with a want of due diligence than those who, though unable to issue the war[98] rant he asked for, did their best to put him in the *right way to obtain it. The Maria Ross was, however, twice searched before leaving the bay, and the mate, who was afterward examined, denied most positively that she had taken any passengers, or that any men were concealed on board of her.3

Such, as far as is known to Her Majesty's government, is all the information which the authorities of Melbourne were able to obtain as to the alleged shipment of men from the colony on board the Shenandoah. It was furnished, for the most part, to the police by the boatmen who had been employed in putting the men on board, on the understanding that they should not themselves suffer on account of what had been done. Of the four men who had been arrested on the night of the 14th, one claimed to be an American citizen and was discharged; the other three were remanded, and, after a month's imprisonment, brought

to trial. Two of them were then convicted and sentenced to further imprisonment; the third, a boy of seventeen, was discharged. The governor, in reporting these facts, announced his intention of refusing the hospitalities of a neutral port to Lieutenant Waddell and the other officers of the Shenandoah, should they revisit the colony. He wrote also to the governors of New Zealand and the other Australian colonies, and to the commander of the British naval forces on the station, to warn them of what had occurred.

Having thus recounted the facts of the visit of the Shenandoah to Melbourne, Her Britannic Majesty's government proceeds to notice the more important of the complaints made in the case of the United States, respecting the manner in which that vessel and her officers were received and treated by the authorities. Some of these contradict one another. For instance, at page 426 of the Case, it is imputed as a delinquency that Lieutenant Waddell's application for permission to repair was not officially answered till after the twenty-four hours allowed by the instructions of January, 1862, for his stay had expired; a statement which is supported by no evidence, and which, from the terms of the United States consul's report to his own Government, appears highly improbable. It will there be seen that the Shenandoah entered the bay about 8 o'clock p. m. on the 25th of January,2 and that the consul received, at 3.30 p.m. on the next day, a communication from the govern ment respecting the prisoners whom Lieutenant Waddell desired to land; this communication having been decided on, and no doubt sent at the same time as the answer to Lieutenant Waddell's application. But almost immediately afterward it is mentioned, apparently as stil! more reprehensible, that the officer who took Lieutenant Waddell's letter on shore returned with an affirmative answer the same night. If it was wrong to delay the official answer, it is difficult to understand what exception could be taken to sending a verbal reply at once; but it will have been seen by the narrative given above, that this second statement is also incorrect, and that the bearer was only informed that the letter would receive early attention.

In the Case of the United States, objection is taken to the permission which was given to Lieutenant Waddell to take on board 250 tons of coal while at Melbourne; and a minute examination is attempted of the nature of the repairs supposed to have been made, with an elaborate estimate of the time in which they might have been completed, if pushed on with rapidity, and if nothing had occurred to delay them. "It is difficult," the Case says, "under the circumstances, to resist the conclusion that the repairs were dawdled along for the purpose of securing the recruits, and that the authorities, to say the least, shut their eyes while this was going on." At this distance of time and place, when all the particular circumstances cannot be exactly known, it seems to Her Britannic Majesty's government that it could scarcely serve any useful purpose to follow all the details of a technical argument which is founded largely on conjecture. What, indeed, could be less reasonable than that the arbitrators should now be asked, in a case of this kind, to set aside the estimates made on the spot and at the time by government 'Appendix to British Case, vol. i, p. 550.

Appendix to the Case of the United States, vol. vi, p. 588.

3 See Appendix to British Case, vol. i, p. 511. It is stated in one of the newspapers sent home by the American consul, that the reply was known on board the Shenan doah between 3 and 4 o'clock, (Appendix to Case of United States, vol. vi, p. 652.)

This is stated on the authority of a published account of the cruise of the Shenandoah by one of her officers, which in other respects also gives a very inaccurate accouul of the communications between Lieutenant Waddell and the colonial authorities.

officers and experienced professional men, on the strength of a merely conjectural estimate suggested by the United States, which takes no account of local circumstances, and, on no better ground than this, to impute negligence and connivance to the authorities of an important British colony?

The Shenandoah arrived at Melbourne during a period of exceedingly severe weather. She was obliged, according to the showing of the

United States themselves, to depend upon her steam power, on ac[99] count of the inadequacy of her crew. In this manner she *had

expended a considerable portion of her original supply of coal, and had worn out the machinery of her screw. She thus came into Melbourne in a partially disabled state, and requested and obtained permission to make good her defects and to replenish her coal. The United States have sought to draw a contrast between her treatment there, and that of a vessel of the United States Navy at Barbados. The difference, however, really lay not so much in the treatment as in the circumstances of the two vessels and the temper of their respective commanders. The Shenandoah was not allowed to remain in port on the mere word of Lieutenant Waddell, but was twice subjected to the examination of a board of officers appointed by the governor for the purpose, who certified that she was in need of repairs. To this examination Lieutenant Waddell assented without any demur. Captain Boggs, on the other hand, who was distant from the ports of his own country about as many hundreds of miles as Lieutenant Waddell was thousands, took offense at a request that he would give an assurance of his inability to put to sea, and preferred to leave the port at once. It was not the intention of the orders of January, 1862, that a vessel should be dismissed summarily from a port in a distant colony, many thousands of miles from her own ports, in a crippled state, in which her crew would be inadequate to manage her. It is objected that the repairs were "dawdled"—and this when, a few pages before, attention has been drawn to a passage in one of Lieutenant Waddell's letters, to show that he had commenced the repairs at once, before a report had been furnished of what was required. On reference to the copies of correspondence sent home at the time, and to those since received from the present governor, it is found that the sentence referred to ("the other repairs are progressing rapidly") did not occur in Lieutenant Waddell's original letter, though inserted in the copy published in the colonial newspapers, from which the quotation, in the Case of the United States, is made.3 It is, however, true that, with a view to complete the repairs as soon as possible, men were employed to calk the vessel as soon as permission to repair was received, The nature of the weather, which was very rough, probably rendered it impossible to send down a diver to examine the vessel for the first few days, and the state of the tides seems to have occasioned some further delay in getting her on to the slip, but in other respects the repairs were pushed on with all possible rapidity and completed within the time estimated for them. Lieutenant Waddell expressed throughout his anxiety to shorten his stay, and probably with truth, if, as may be gathered from the correspondence, his men were deserting. The steps taken for examining the vessel, the vigilance enjoined on the authori ties of the port, the daily reports required from them as to the progress of repairs, and the reiterated request to Lieutenant Waddell to fix a 1 Case of the United States, p. 421.

Ibid., p. 427.

3 See Appendix to British Case, vol. v., p. 68.

day for his departure, certainly show no laxity or indisposition on the part of the colonial government to prevent any abuse of the permission granted by it.

On the question of the enlistment of men, and the proceedings taken against the offenders, it is remarked, in the Case of the United States, that the authorities "carefully let alone Captain Waddell and his offi cers, who had been violating Her Majesty's proclamation and the laws of the empire, and they aimed the thunders of the law against an assistant cook." The facts are, in the first place, that there was evidence against the seamen arrested, and suspicion only against the commander; and, in the second place, that the arrest, on a charge of this kind, of the commanding officer of a foreign ship of war who may happen to be ashore (on board, of course, he is secure from it) is a far graver matter than seems to be supposed, and is, indeed, an extreme measure which only very extraordinary circumstances could justify. The local authorities received up to the last the most positive assurances from Lieutenant Waddell that he had not added to his crew, and had not violated, and would not violate, the neutrality of the port. They took every precaution in their power to insure the performance of this promise; and if their efforts were not altogether successful, this must be attributed to the difficulties they had to deal with, the inade quacy of the means at their disposal, and to the reliance which they placed on the word of one whom they knew to be an American officer. and might, therefore, reasonably believe to be a gentleman and worthy of credit.

A case (with which the arbitrators are already acquainted)1 of the reception of some men on board a vessel of war of the United States at Cork shows that such occurrences may, at the time, escape the notice not only of the authorities, but also of the commander of the vessel. On the occasion referred to, sixteen men were shipped on board the United States war-steamer Kearsarge. The fact was not known

until the vessel had sailed for France; and on her return to Cork, [100] a month afterward, the men were sent on shore by the captain,

with a declaration that they had been shipped without his knowledge and contrary to his instructions. Six of the men were pros ecuted, but were discharged without punishment, as having prob ably been unaware of the nature of the offense they were committing. Evidence having been produced to implicate some of the inferior officers of the vessel, representations were addressed to the Government of the United States upon the subject, and the latter expressed their willingness to institute an investigation when the Kearsarge returned home. The course adopted on this occasion certainly did not differ, on the side of severity, from that pursued toward the Shenandoah. Nor is it doubtful to Her Majesty's government that if on that occasion Captain Winslow had been arrested in the streets of Cork, this would have been regarded as somewhat more than due diligence by the Gov ernment of the United States.

There is a further statement in this part of the Case of the United States which Her Britannic Majesty's government approaches with regret.

At page 430 mention is made of a discussion which took place in the legislative assembly at Melbourne as to the reception of the Shenandoah and her supposed identity with the Sea King. The chief secre tary stated that "in dealing with the vessel they (the government) had

See British Case, p. 154.