Thus, evidence that the merchantman was carrying contraband goods to the enemy would justify a capture, as would an attempt to carry any goods into a port blockaded by a belligerent. It was also generally agreed that a merchantman lost its neutral character by giving or attempting to give material aid to one of the belligerent powers. If the prize court were to determine that the seizure or destruction was unjustified, the captors would have to return the property to its owners, when possible, and pay damages. Military necessity might justify scuttling or burning a seized merchantman, but in that case, an admiralty trial would still be necessary. Any merchantman captured by a belligerent warship would have to be sent into a port and given a trial using admiralty law procedures to determine whether the capture was a good prize. Resistance to boarding, attempted flight, concealment of papers, dual sets of papers, forged papers, and the like could justify seizure of a merchant ship in time of war. It was generally agreed that belligerents had the right to capture merchant ships belonging to subjects of the enemy country, and in order for the commanders of belligerent nations’ warships to exercise this right, they had the right to identify the national identity of merchant ships encountered at sea by boarding them and examining their papers. Whichever rules a nation followed applied equally to its navy and to its privateers. Rather, what constituted international law was a continual negotiation between rules that favored belligerent rights and those that favored neutral rights. In fact, there was no single body of international law accepted by all nations, or even all European nations. Broadly speaking, nations had the right to exercise sovereignty only over contiguous waters that lay within reach of their shore batteries.Īcceptance of the principle of freedom of the seas left much room for disagreement over the rights of neutrals and the rights of belligerents. Grotius argued in favor of mare librum, or freedom of the seas, by which he meant that, by natural law, the oceans are common to all and should be open to all to use without hindrance. The law of nations, or international law, as it relates to the sea had its roots in the writings of several 16th- and 17th-century theorists, beginning with the Dutch writer Hugo Grotius, who rejected the claim of the Spanish to dominion over the seas. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States based its rules of engagement at sea on the American understanding of the law of nations.
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