transportation were viewed as one continuous voyage, be held to constitute in a British vessel such a trading with the enemy as to bring the vessel within the provisions of the municipal law."[33] He asserted that the offense was cognizable by a prize court alone, but admitted that “if the owners of the cargoes, being neutrals, claim that they are innocent, the cargoes should not be condemned with the ship but should be delivered over to them."[34] He suggested that the ordinary course would be that the owners should claim the cargoes in the prize court, where the cases would be considered and properly dealt with on their merits.[35] The owners would be requested, he said, to prove that they were the bona fide owners by submitting bills of lading and invoices to the court.  It was intimated that the American flour which had been removed from the ships was not detained in any way but was perfectly open to the owners to make whatever arrangements they pleased for its immediate removal.  If they considered themselves aggrieved by the action of the English authorities in causing the flour to be landed it was of course open to them to take such proceedings against the persons concerned as they were advised might be appropriate under the circumstances.[36]

[Footnote 32:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 549; Salisbury per Choate to Hay.]

[Footnote 33:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 609; Hay to White, March 20, 1900, citing Choate’s despatch of April 26, 1900.]

[Footnote 34:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 549.]

[Footnote 35:  See Story, Manual of Naval Prize Law (1854), pp. 46-71, where the practice in such cases before prize courts is stated; in other portions of the work the claims made by innocent or interested parties are considered.]

[Footnote 36:  For.  Rel., 1900, p. 549, Salisbury, speaking with special reference to the Mashona and Maria; Choate to Hay, Jan. 10, 1899.]

Mr. Choate at once retorted that in such a case the United States would very probably send the bill to the British Government.  The fact was pointed out that the operation of the English law did not lessen the obligation incumbent upon Great Britain to restore the goods to their bona fide neutral owners or to the neutral consignees.  Although the permission had been given to the owners to come and take their goods at the ports of detention, short of the original port of destination, this permission could not be considered as discharging the obligation to restore the goods.  The representative of the United States insisted that nothing short of delivery at their port of consignment would fulfill the English obligation in a commercial sense such as to give the goods the value intended.  It was clearly shown that under the application of the English municipal law the goods in question became 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."[37]