Note 580 — Chapter I · ON NEUTRALITY IN GENERAL

An interesting case which ought here to be mentioned occurred in October 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. Messrs. Yarrow & Co., the shipbuilders, possessed a partly completed vessel, the Caroline, which could be finally fitted up either as a yacht or as a torpedo-boat. In September 1904, a Mr. Sinnet and the Hon. James Burke Roche called at the shipbuilding yard of Messrs. Yarrow, bought the Caroline, and ordered her to be fitted up as a high-speed yacht. The required additions were finished on October 3. On October 6 the vessel left Messrs. Yarrow's yard and was navigated by a Captain Ryder, via Hamburg, to the Russian port of Libau, there to be altered into a torpedo-boat. That section 8 of the Foreign Enlistment Act applies to this case there is no doubt. But there is no doubt either that it is this Act, and not the rules of International Law, which required the prosecution of Messrs. Sinnet and Roche on the part of the British Government. For, if viewed from the basis of International Law, the case is merely one of contraband. See below, §§ 321, 334, and 397.