Prize court upholds the seizure of the Dacia

At its sessions of 3 and 5 August 1915 the French Prize Council (Conseil des prises) declared lawful the seizure of the steamer Dacia, stopped on 27 February by the auxiliary cruiser Europe at the entrance to the English Channel. The British chronology of the war already places this ruling under 22 March 1915, but French official documents show that at the end of March the case was only just reaching the court.

The road to the judgment

According to the published judgment, the Minister of Marine sent the Council the case file together with letters of 30 March, 29 April, and 15 and 26 July 1915, asking for the seizure to be declared valid. The official notice of the case appeared in the official journal on 10 April. The ship’s owner, the American Edward N. Breitung, defended himself through an advocate at the Council of State. At the request of the United States ambassador the Prize Council twice, on 11 May and 8 June, gave him more time to submit his explanations.

Breitung demanded the release of the ship on bail, recognition of the change of flag as valid under Article 56 of the Declaration of London, and 300,000 francs in damages. He argued that he was an American conducting serious business, not a front man, that even before the war he had been thinking of founding shipping lines, and that he had bought the Dacia in the ordinary course of business. The file also contained affidavits sworn in New York. In one of them, of 22 March 1915, the director of the New York agency of HAPAG stated that he had learnt of the ship’s transfer to Breitung only later and had never met him.

A voyage planned in Bremen

The Council established that the Dacia’s voyage had been planned before the ship changed her flag. On 9 December 1914 a broker, Egon von Novelly, undertook to provide a ship under the American flag to carry 11,000 bales of cotton from Galveston to Bremen. On 10 and 12 December a Texan exporter sold this cotton in Bremen to a buyer acting on behalf of German merchants, and payment was guaranteed by the Deutsche Bank and the Disconto-Gesellschaft. The Council pointed out that the bill of sale of the ship, found on board, had not been signed by Breitung or by anyone on his behalf. The freight paid in advance exceeded the price Breitung had given for the ship, so even before she sailed he had recovered the money he had spent.

The ruling

The Council found that the transfer of the Dacia to a neutral flag had been intended to allow the ship to escape capture and continue trading with the enemy, and that at the moment she was stopped she was making the same voyage for which she had been chartered while still under the German flag. Such a change of flag could not be effective against the belligerents. The seizure of the ship together with her equipment and stores was declared “good and valid”, and the personal effects of the master and crew were ordered to be returned. The Council noted that it was ruling only on the ship, not on the cargo.

The judgment was published in the official journal on 6 August, and on 28 September it was reprinted with errors corrected. The ship was renamed Yser. She was sunk by a German submarine in November 1915, and the appeal of the American owners was dismissed only on 30 November 1916.