TERRITORIAL WATERS

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 120, 6 February 1923, Page 5

TERRITORIAL WATERS

♦ MOVEMENT TO EXTEND THE THREE-MILE LIMIT. The claim just put forth by the United States Government to exercise the right of search under the Prohibition Law in the case of all vessels within twelve miles of the shore, raises in an acute form the question of the extent of territorial waters (says the London “Observer”). Afost countries at present agree that their jurisdiction over the waters round their coast ceases three nautical miles (about 3.} British statute miles) from their shores, though there is no general international agreement on the matter. Spain enforces a limit of six nautical miles, Norway has recently intimated its intention of extending its territorial waters from four to ten miles seawards, and the Russian Soviet Government has adopted a twclvc-mile limit, and twice within the last few months its officials have arrested British fishing craft on the wrong side of this new boundary line off the Kola Peninsula. The', three-milo limit was first, definitely laid down in an international convention between the British and United States Governments shortly after the American War of Independence, but how or when the limit arose is not quite clear. One explanation is that it was adopted because three miles is the approximate distance of the horizon as seen by a person standing on the shore at sea level : and another traces it to the maximum range of I eoast-defence guns in the eighteenth I century. The latter is the more nrohI able, as the distance of the visible I horizon varies with the height of an I observer, and whore the coast lii'o is elevated above sea level, say a hundred feet the horizon would be nearly twelve miles distant. But whatever tho origin of the threemile limit, now that it is beitm challenged by several nations, it will almost certainly have to bo reconsidered, and it seems eminently a matter that ■ might be referred io tho. League of Nations, with a view to the adoption of a limit more in conformity with the power modern artillery has given seagirt nations to enforce their sovereign rights. /