From James Madison to Louis F. Delesdernier, 4 March 1806 (Abstract)
To Louis F. Delesdernier, 4 March 1806 (Abstract)
§ To Louis F. Delesdernier. 4 March 1806, Department of State. “I enclose an extract from the Gazette,1 stating under the head of St. John’s, 20 Jany. the condemnation at the Court of Vice Admiralty there of the Sloop Falmouth, which had been seized, in October last, by the Union Cutter, under the direction of a British officer of the Customs, for receiving plaster of Paris out of a British Vessel, off Snug Coove, in the Island of Campo Bello. As this decision may be very interresting in respect to the Boundary of the United States, I request you to be pleased to transmit me a sketch of the part of the Bay of Passamaquaddy including the passage in question and such other information as may be of service to elucidate the subject; as also a transcript of the case from the Register’s office at St. John’s.”
Letterbook copy (DNA: RG 59, DL, vol. 15). 2 pp. Addressed to the collector of customs at Passamaquoddy. For enclosure, see n. 1.
1. The 3 Mar. 1806 National Intelligencer carried a 20 Jan. report that the sloop Falmouth, Ebenezer Lock, master, and its cargo had been condemned in the St. John, New Brunswick, vice-admiralty court because the cargo had been loaded “on the British side of a line drawn through the waters between Campo-bello and Dudley islands.” Lock’s claim that the waters in issue either belonged to the United States or were “neutral, free or common to the vessels of both nations, for the purpose of trade and navigation … was dismissed but without cost” because “such a trade had been practised for some years past, with the knowledge and consent of the custom-house officers of both governments; and there appeared to be no intention of fraud on the part of the claimants.”