Note 1045 — Chapter I · THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE TERRITORIAL SEA.
Reading edition
21st Nov. 1777; 9th May 1778. Martens, Recueil, iii. 16, 18. In Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, i. 118 (ed. 1884), it is said (apparently on the authority of Sparks’ Diplomatic Correspondence, ii. 110) that the Commissioners, in their circular letter of 1777 to the commanders of American armed vessels, “carried very far the extension of neutral protection when they applied it indiscriminately to all captures within sight of a neutral coast.” There is nothing of this in the document given by Martens.