The Steamship Appam | |
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Argued January 15–16, 1917 Decided March 6, 1917 | |
Full case name | Hans Berg, Prize Master in charge of the Prize Ship "Appam," and L. M. Von Schilling, Vice-Consul of the German Empire v. British & African Steam Navigation Co. Hans Berg, Prize Master in charge of the Prize Ship "Appam," and L. M. Von Schilling, Vice-Consul of the German Empire v. Henry G. Harrison, Master of the Steamship "Appam" |
Citations | 243 U.S. 124 ( more ) 37 S. Ct. 337; 61 L. Ed. 633; 1917 U.S. LEXIS 2102 |
Holding | |
The court affirmed the decision of Federal Judge Edmund Waddill of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to release SS Appam to her British owners. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinion | |
Majority | Day, joined by unanimous court |
The Steamship Appam, 243 U.S. 124 (1917), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed a lower court's decision to restore the British prize of a German warship to the British owners. [1] [2]
On January 15, 1916, the British steamship SS Appam was captured off the Canary Islands by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Möwe. A 22-man prize crew, and 138 passengers taken from other captured ships, were put aboard and she was taken to Hampton Roads, Virginia, arriving on February 1. [3] Appam's British owner, the British and African Steam Navigation Co, filed suit to recover possession of her from her captors. Federal Judge Edmund Waddill of Virginia, in a 15,000-word opinion, directed, July 29, 1916, that the vessel, with the cargo remaining aboard her and the proceeds of the perishable cargo already sold, should be restored at once to her British owners.
The German government appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which on March 6, 1917 handed down a decision that a belligerent nation may not bring prizes of war into a neutral port. The Supreme Court held that it would be unneutral for the United States to permit either belligerent to bring prizes into American ports, and that Germany could not claim such right under any of the existing treaties between that country and the United States. In bringing Appam into an American port, it was held, the German officials were committing a clear breach of American neutrality.
Ship and cargo, valued at between three and four million dollars, were delivered to the British owners March 28, 1917. The decision, written by Justice William R. Day, affirmed decrees by Federal Judge Waddill, and upheld the original ruling by Secretary of State Robert Lansing that prizes coming into American ports unaccompanied by captor warships have the right to remain only long enough to make themselves seaworthy. The court stated that neither the Treaty of 1799 with Prussia, the Hague conventions nor the Declaration of London, entitled any belligerents to make American ports a place of deposit of prizes as spoils of war under such circumstances.
The opinion adds:
The principles of international law, leaving the treaty aside, will not permit the ports of the United States to be thus used by the belligerents. If such use were permitted, it would constitute the ports of a neutral nation harbors of safety into which prizes might be safely brought and indefinitely kept. From the beginning of its history this country has been careful to maintain a neutral position between warring governments, and not to allow use of its ports in violation of the obligations of neutrality, nor to permit such use beyond the necessities arising from perils of the seas or the necessities of such vessels as to seaworthiness, provisions and supplies.
After return to its initial owners, the ship was renamed SS Mandingo for the rest of the war before reverting to her original name in 1919. Thereafter she traded for many years on routes to West Africa and was scrapped in 1936. [4]
A letter of marque and reprisal was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury. Captured naval prizes were judged before the government's admiralty court for condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer.
A blockade runner is a merchant vessel used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait. It is usually light and fast, using stealth and speed rather than confronting the blockaders in order to break the blockade. Blockade runners usually transport cargo, for example bringing food or arms to a blockaded city. They have also carried mail in an attempt to communicate with the outside world.
Prize money refers in particular to naval prize money, usually arising in naval warfare, but also in other circumstances. It was a monetary reward paid in accordance with the prize law of a belligerent state to the crew of a ship belonging to the state, either a warship of its navy or a privateer vessel commissioned by the state. Prize money was most frequently awarded for the capture of enemy ships or of cargoes belonging to an enemy in time of war, either arrested in port at the outbreak of war or captured during the war in international waters or other waters not the territorial waters of a neutral state. Goods carried in neutral ships that are classed as contraband, being shipped to enemy-controlled territory and liable to be useful to it for making war, were also liable to be taken as prizes, but non-contraband goods belonging to neutrals were not. Claims for the award of prize money were usually heard in a prize court, which had to adjudicate the claim and condemn the prize before any distribution of cash or goods could be made to the captors.
Visit and Search is the right of a belligerent warship, under certain conditions, to board a neutral merchant ship in order to verify its true character. The term probably refers to a misunderstanding of the French word visite, which in this context simply means search.
Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635 (1863), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1862 during the American Civil War. The Supreme Court's decision declared the blockade of the Southern ports ordered by President Abraham Lincoln constitutional. The opinion in the case was written by Supreme Court Justice Robert Cooper Grier.
SMS Seeadler was a three-masted steel-hulled sailing ship. She was one of the last fighting sailing ships to be used in war when she served as a merchant raider with Imperial Germany in World War I. Built as the British-flagged Pass of Balmaha, she was captured by the German submarine SM U-36, and in 1916 converted to a commerce raider. As Seeadler she had a successful raiding career, capturing and sinking 15 ships in 225 days until she was wrecked, in 2 August 1917, in French Polynesia.
In admiralty law prizes are equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and its cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, it would be made the subject of a prize case: an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.
ThePaquete Habana; The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court concerning the applicability and recognition of international law by the United States. The Court held that the capture of fishing vessels as prizes of war violated customary international law, which is integrated with U.S. law and binding as such. Paquete Habana influenced subsequent court decisions that incorporated international law regarding other matters. The case is also notable for citing a wide breadth of historical and international sources, including jurists from around the world and foreign state practices going back centuries.
SMS Möwe was a merchant raider of the Imperial German Navy which operated against Allied shipping during World War I.
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The First League of Armed Neutrality was an alliance of European naval powers between 1780 and 1783 which was intended to protect neutral shipping against the British Royal Navy's wartime policy of unlimited search of neutral shipping for French contraband during the American Revolutionary War and Anglo-French War. According to one estimate, 1 in 5 merchant vessels were searched by the Royal Navy under this policy. By September 1778, at least 59 ships had been taken prize – 8 Danish, 16 Swedish and 35 Dutch, as well as others from Prussia. Protests were enormous by every side involved.
SMS Leopard was a British cargo steamship that was built in 1912 as Yarrowdale, captured in 1916 by the Imperial German Navy, converted into a commerce raider in Germany, and sunk with all hands by the Royal Navy in 1917.
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SS Appam was a British steamship owned by the British & African Steam Navigation Company, a subsidiary of Elder Dempster Shipping Limited, that was captured at sea by the German raider SMS Möwe in 1916. The Germans took the ship to port at Hampton Roads in Virginia in the United States where the Supreme Court of the United States decided who would get ownership of the vessel.
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William O'Brien was a steam cargo ship built in 1914–1915 by New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden for the Carpenter–O'Brien Lumber Company of Delaware. The vessel was extensively employed on East Coast to Europe routes during her career and foundered on one of her regular trips in April 1920.
The navicert, short for navigation certificate, also known as a "Letter of Assurance" was a form of commercial passport issued to allow ships to pass through blockades without inspection. This was of particular relevance during the British naval blockades of Germany in WWI and WWII.