French seize the Dacia

On 27 February 1915 the French auxiliary cruiser Europe stopped, at the western entrance to the English Channel, the steamer Dacia, sailing under the American flag with a cargo of cotton. The ship was taken to Brest, where she awaited the decision of a French prize court. Some sources give the date as 28 February, but American diplomatic documents and the British chronology of the war point to 27 February.

End of the voyage

The Dacia, a former steamer of the German shipowner HAPAG, bought in December by an American, Edward N. Breitung, set out across the Atlantic in mid-February with about 11,000 bales of cotton. According to her declaration the ship was sailing from Norfolk to Rotterdam. The cargo documents, however, showed that the cotton came from Texas and was destined for Bremen. On the way the ship entered waters that Germany had regarded since 18 February as a war zone. She was stopped, however, not by a German submarine but by an Allied warship.

Until then the dispute over the Dacia had been between Washington and London. The British had announced that they would send the ship before their prize court. The French seizure is often regarded as a convenient solution that spared Britain another clash with American public opinion, already irritated by the control of neutral trade and the question of neutral flags.

The French position

On 5 March the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Théophile Delcassé, explained to the United States ambassador that France treated the Dacia as an enemy ship, because French law did not recognise a change of flag made after the outbreak of war. The crew, as citizens of a neutral state, were released. Delcassé indicated that France would not closely examine whether the cargo belonged to the enemy, and that its owner would probably be able to choose whether the cotton would be sent on to its destination or the French would pay for it.

The French Prize Council considered the case in summer 1915. It found that the transfer of the ship to the American flag had been intended to let her avoid capture and continue trading with the enemy, and it ordered the Dacia confiscated. The French government renamed the ship Yser. She did not serve long: on 6 November 1915, on a voyage from Cardiff to Bizerte, she was stopped and sunk by gunfire by the German submarine U-38 off the coast of Algeria. The American owners’ appeal against the prize court’s ruling was dismissed only on 30 November 1916.