I have not yet delivered these documents, deeming it prudent to await the
answer to my offer of sale to Her Majesty’s Government of this very
flour. I assume that the new statement of the price which would be
satisfactory to the company stated in this letter, viz, invoice value,
with damages, etc., intends the same as was stated in your cable of
January 7, viz, market value at the port of destination at the date when
it would have arrived there in due course of voyage if the same had been
uninterrupted, and so I have not changed the form of my offer.
In view, however, of the long delay which has already occurred in the
case of the cargoes landed by all three vessels—the Beatrice, the Maria, and the Mashona—and of vague hints dropped by Lord
Salisbury that the owners of cargo might have claim against the two
British vessels, I have addressed him a note, dated yesterday (copy
annexed), which I hope will meet your approval.
[Inclosure.]
Mr. Choate to
Lord Salisbury.
American Embassy,
London, February 6,
1900.
My Lord: I have the honor to acknowledge
the receipt of your lordship’s note of the 2d instant, giving me
such information as you had received up to that date in regard to
the cargo of the Beatrice.
Your lordship’s note confirmed the information which I had for the
first time received in our interview of January 31, that as British
vessels can not under the municipal law of Great Britain carry
merchandise destined for the enemy’s territory, “when the Beatrice came within British jurisdiction she
was required to land all such merchandise, and this part of her
cargo was therefore put ashore (at East London) with such other
portions of the cargo as had to be removed in order to reach it; and
that so far as is known in your department none but British lines of
steamers run from the ports of Cape Colony to Delagoa Bay, which
accounts for the flour mentioned by me in my note of the 29th being
still at East London.”
Your lordship has no doubt that the flour and any other merchandise
not contraband of war from the Beatrice would
be handed over to any person who showed that he was entitled to
receive it, just as in the case of the Maria
and the Mashona you had already declared that
on proving property the owners might take the cargo at the place
where it was landed, Durban and Cape Town, respectively.
Tbe obligation of restitution of these cargoes to their owners being
conceded, the permission extended to the owners to come and take
them at ports short of the port of destination can not be considered
as a discharge of that obligation, as delivery at the port of
destination is, in a commercial sense, the act which gives them the
value intended, and you would not claim that you require the owners
to go elsewhere for them; and as to all such goods as your note of
the 2d relates to, which can not be carried on in British vessels
because of your municipal law, or in other vessels, because there
are no other to take them, they are as inaccessible to their owners
for all the purposes of their commercial adventure as if they had
been landed on a rock in mid ocean.
[Page 586]
The discharge from the vessel and landing short of the port of
destination, and failure to restore and deliver at that port,
constitute wrongful acts as against all owners of innocent cargo;
and you do not claim that any but British subjects can be guilty of
any violation of your municipal act against trading with the enemy.
It is now two months or more since the Beatrice’s cargo was thus landed at East London, and some
of it, at any rate, put out of the reach of its owners, even if they
were ready to accept your invitation to go there and take it; and in
the climate of South Africa all perishable articles, such as flour
and other food stuffs, must be subject to deterioration as well as
to the other damages in the loss of the expected price at the port
of destination, etc.
The American owners of cargo on these three vessels so treated will
claim—and my Government concurs in the justice of their claim—that
Her Majesty’s Government will be bound to indemnify them for and
make good to them all damages and loss sustained by them by such
treatment, including damages from the climatic influences which
affect all food stuffs, and from the failure to receive their cargo
at the port of destination at the due date. They fear that in many
instances the damage may subsequently involve the entire value of
the goods.
Can not something be done, therefore, to minimize these damages? If,
by reason of your municipal law, no owner of a British vessel can
carry innocent goods to the port of destination, and there are not
other vessels to carry them, can not your Government itself take up
a vessel and so discharge its obligation to restore and deliver at
the port of destination, or suspend, in these particular instances,
Her Majesty’s proclamation, so as to permit this to be done by
private owners?
The Pennsylvania Milling Company has invoices of flour on all three
vessels, no part of which, so far as I can learn, has reached its
port of destination. In pursuance of your Lordship’s suggestion,
that Her Majesty’s Government might be disposed to purchase the
flour, I made, by my note of the 13th ultimo, a direct offer of
sale, but no reply as yet has been received. While we are waiting
the flour may perish from decay. Can not something be done to
expedite this particular case, or must these innocent shippers and
owners be left to a protracted prosecutiou of claims for damages,
instead of having their property promptly restored to them, as was
their right?
I have, etc.,
