§ MR. G. SANDARSwished to ask the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs if he had heard of the fact of several British ships, with British property, sailing from the ports of Barth, having been seized by the Danish ships of war, and taken into Copenhagen, though the said port of Barth was not one of the ports which had been declared under blockade, or any steps taken to render it so?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONreplied, all he knew of the facts was, that representations had been addressed to him by parties interested in these vessels, and upon those representations he had directed inquiries to be instituted at Copenhagen to ascertain the circumstances of the ease.
§ MR. G. SANDARSwished to call the attention of the noble Lord to a letter he had received from Hamburgh, dated 29th May, containing the following telegraphic despatch from Cuxhaven of that date:—
The English steamer Rob Roy, which arrived here at six P.M. yesterday, under the post-office flag, from Hull, only landed her passengers and returned to Hull at about seven o'clock. This was in consequence of the commander of the Danish ship of war only giving permission to the steamer to enter the Elbe under those conditions; and he further required the whole of the crew of the Rob Roy to be taken out and replaced by a Danish crew of one lieutenant and ten men to take her in charge to Cuxhaven, and back again to the frigate.This appeared to him a most extraordinary proceeding, and he begged to call Her Majesty's Government's attention to it, as being very like an indignity offered to the British flag.
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONexplained, that in the former arrangements with the Danish Government a certain number of post-office packets were named which should be allowed to pass through the blockade. It so happened that the Hull packets were not therein included. The Post Office had, however, since entered into contracts with those packets, and he had notified the fact to the Danish Government, and had applied for the same privileges; but no answer had as yet been received to the application. Under these circumstances it was very probable the Danish officer, not being aware of the circumstances, had acted in the manner described, as he only knew the Bob Boy was not one of the Royal Mail Packets included in the first arrangement.
§ MR. G. SANDARSbegged to call the noble Lord's attention to a further fact. 1039 In a letter which he had received from the Foreign Office, dated May 23rd, was the following sentence:—
The commanders of Her Majesty's steamers Hecate and Sphynx have both reported the blockade of the Elbe by the Danish squadron to be an effectual blockade, and that the Governor of Heligoland coincides in that opinion.Now, the real fact is, that it was a most partial and imperfect blockade. He held in his hand some twenty certificates from Cuxhaven and Stade, giving the names of vessels which had passed those ports from the 17th to 25th May; they amounted to no less than thirty-six having arrived at Cuxhaven, and sixty having paid the Stade dues and passed up the Elbe, every one of which must have broken the blockade said to be so effective by Her Majesty's officers on board the war steamers and at Heligoland. How did the noble Lord account for this discrepancy?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONadmitted the statement of the hon. Gentleman was perfectly true. A Government steamer had been despatched at the commencement of hostilities to examine the condition of the blockade, and reported it was effective, and that the Danish cruisers were in a position to enforce it; but it was also true that no blockade, particularly in such a river as the Elbe, could be rendered so effective as that vessels might not now and then break through it at night and other times.
§ Subject at an end.