Taking Over and Return of Dutch Vessels, 1918-1919

Extract

In modern times of war belligerents usually have need of exceptional facilities for transportation. The taking over of private means of transportation belonging to the citizens of the belligerents has been common. The seizure of means of land transportation, whoever may be the owner, has long been common and was often called the exercise of the right of angary. With the development of maritime transportation, vessels were appropriated for war use. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was little question as to the right of angary. With the opening of the nineteenth century the right was questioned, as treaties had begun to prescribe that the right would not be exercised. Some treaties made specific mention of the use of vessels, etc., for military purposes, as the treaty between Prussia and Salvador, 1870, Article VI:

The citizens or subjects of each country cannot respectively be subjected to any embargo, nor can they be detained with their vessels, cargoes, merchandise, and effects for any military expedition, nor for any public use, unless there has been previously fixed by the interested parties themselves or by experts on their behalf, a sufficient indemnification in all cases, according to usage, both for the service imposed upon them, and for the damages, losses, and delays occasioned thereby or resulting therefrom.