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The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general trade embargo on all foreign nations that was enacted by the United States Congress. As a successor or replacement law for the 1806 Non-importation Act and passed as the Napoleonic Wars continued, it represented an escalation of attempts to persuade Britain to stop any impressment of American sailors and to respect American sovereignty and neutrality but also attempted to pressure France and other nations in the pursuit of general diplomatic and economic leverage.
The law of war is a component of international law that regulates the conditions for initiating war and the conduct of hostilities. Laws of war define sovereignty and nationhood, states and territories, occupation, and other critical terms of law.
An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in long distance and high value trade. In more modern times, auxiliary cruisers were used offensively as merchant raiders to disrupt trade chiefly during both World War I and World War II, particularly by Germany.
Contraband is any item that, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold. It comprises goods that by their nature are considered too dangerous or offensive in the eyes of the legislator—termed contraband in se—and forbidden.
On September 3, 1939, the British and French declarations of war on Germany initiated the Battle of the Atlantic. The United States Navy Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) established a combined air and ship patrol of the United States Atlantic coast, including the Caribbean, on 4 September, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the United States' neutrality on 5 September, and declared the naval patrol a Neutrality Patrol. Roosevelt's initiation of the Neutrality Patrol, which in fact also escorted British ships, as well as orders to U.S. Navy destroyers first to actively report U-boats, then "shoot on sight", meant American neutrality was honored more in the breach than observance.
Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships such as freighters and tankers without warning. The use of unrestricted submarine warfare has had significant impacts on international relations in regard to both the First World War and the Second World War. Its history has been dominated by German decision making.
The Paris Declaration respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was an international multilateral treaty agreed to by the warring parties in the Crimean War gathered at the Congress at Paris after the peace treaty of Paris had been signed in March 1856. As an important juridical novelty in international law the treaty for the first time created the possibility for nations that were not involved in the establishment of the agreement and did not sign, to become a party by acceding the declaration afterwards. So did altogether 55 nations, which otherwise would have been impossible in such a short period. This represented a large step in the globalisation of international law.
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.
Angary is the right of a belligerent to seize and use, for the purposes of war or to prevent the enemy from doing so, any kind of property on belligerent territory - including what may belong to subjects or citizens of a neutral state.
Altmark was a German oil tanker and supply vessel, one of five of a class built between 1937 and 1939. She is best known for her support of the German commerce raider, the "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee and her subsequent involvement in the "Altmark Incident". In 1940 she was renamed Uckermark and used as supply tanker for the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during Operation Berlin before sailing to Japan in September 1942 as a blockade breaker.
A pacific blockade is a blockade exercised by a great power for the purpose of bringing pressure to bear on a weaker state without actual war. It can be employed only as a measure of coercion by maritime powers able to bring into action such vastly superior forces to those the resisting state can dispose of that resistance is out of the question. The term was created by Laurent-Basile Hautefeuille, a French writer on international maritime law.
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.
Defensively equipped merchant ship (DEMS) was an Admiralty Trade Division programme established in June 1939, to arm 5,500 British merchant ships with an adequate defence against enemy submarines and aircraft. The acronym DEMS was used to describe the ships carrying the guns, the guns aboard the ships, the military personnel manning the guns, and the shore establishment supporting the system. This followed a similar World War I program of defensively armed merchant ships (DAMS).
A Maritime Exclusion Zone (MEZ) is a military exclusion zone at sea. While it is an accepted concept internationally, it is not the subject of an explicit treaty, and there has been variation in naming including: "naval exclusion zone", "maritime security zone", "blockade zone", "maritime operational zone", "area subject to long distance blockade" and "area dangerous to shipping".
The Blockade of Germany, or the Blockade of Europe, occurred from 1914 to 1919. The prolonged naval blockade was conducted by the Allies during and after World War I in an effort to restrict the maritime supply of goods to the Central Powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The blockade is considered one of the key elements in the eventual Allied victory in the war. The restricted supply of strategic materials such as metal ores and oil had a detrimental effect on the Central Powers' war effort, despite ingenious efforts to find other sources or substitutes.
The Confederate privateers were privately owned ships that were authorized by the government of the Confederate States of America to attack the shipping of the United States. Although the appeal was to profit by capturing merchant vessels and seizing their cargoes, the government was most interested in diverting the efforts of the Union Navy away from the blockade of Southern ports, and perhaps to encourage European intervention in the conflict.
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.
The San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea was adopted in June 1994 by the International Institute of Humanitarian Law after a series of round table discussions held between 1988 and 1994 by diplomats and naval and legal experts. It is "the only comprehensive international instrument that has been drafted on the law of naval warfare since 1913."
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.
References
- ↑ Barclay 1911.
- ↑ "Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War". International Committee of the Red Cross.
- ↑ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Barclay, Thomas (1911). "Search". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 560.
