Anglo-French prize agreement

A British chronology of the war records under 15 February 1915 the conclusion of an agreement between Great Britain and France supplementing the prize convention of 9 November 1914. According to British documents published later, it was not a single act but an exchange of notes begun on 15 February and completed on 27 April 1915. The agreement specified whose courts were to rule on the merchant ships of the two allies and on the cargoes they carried.

A gap in the convention

The November convention dealt mainly with enemy and neutral captures, but its Article 2 regulated a special case: the seizure by a warship of one ally of a merchant ship belonging to the other. Such a ship was always to be subject to the prize courts of the state under whose flag it sailed, and its cargo shared the fate of the ship. The only exception was provided by the second paragraph. If an allied ship, originally bound for an enemy port with cargo liable to seizure, put into a port of the other ally, the court there could order the confiscation of the cargo. The value of the goods, after deduction of costs, was then placed to the account of the government of the flag state.

This provision, however, left out the cases that were becoming the most important in wartime. In the face of the British blockade, goods for Germany rarely sailed directly to German ports. They were instead sent to neutral ports, above all Dutch and Scandinavian ones, from where they could be passed on. The convention did not say clearly which court was to rule when such a cargo was found on an allied ship and the ship had been brought into a port of the other ally.

What was agreed

The exchange of notes produced two principles. When proceedings were brought against both the ship and the cargo, the first paragraph of Article 2 always applied, so the case went before the court of the flag state. When only the cargo was concerned, the rule of the second paragraph was to cover not only ships bound for enemy ports but also contraband addressed to neutral ports and enemy property, even if the ship was not heading for an enemy port. In practice this meant that if, for example, a British ship carrying contraband destined for Rotterdam was brought into a French port, a French court could confiscate its cargo, and the proceeds went to Great Britain.

Aftermath

The arrangements were a further step towards a joint Allied economic war at sea. As early as 5 March 1915 Russia acceded to the November convention, and in 1915–1916 it too adopted the same interpretation of Article 2 in an exchange of notes. In January 1917 Italy joined the convention, accepting the agreed interpretation. The British published the text of the February 1915 agreement only in November 1916, in the official treaty series.