§ MR. CAVEsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Why the brig Castilla and brigantine Lola, captured under Spanish colours in October, 1860, by Her Majesty's ship Barracouta, on suspicion of slave trading, were carried into Port Royal, Jamaica, instead of being taken before the Mixed Commission Court at Havanna; whose fault was it that those ves- 2027 sels remained in Port Royal Harbour, untried, till May, 1861, by which demurrage was incurred to the, amount of £10 a day for 229 days in one case, and £11 for 230 days in the other, besides other expenses, amounting in the whole to more than £6,000; and whose fault occasioned the delay and expense in adjudicating the case of the brig Laura, in Antigua, complained of by Captain Hillyar, of Her Majesty's ship Cadmus, in January, 1862?
§ LORD CLARENCE PAGET, in reply, said, the vessels were captured in the waters of Jamaica on the 14th and 15th of October, 1860, by the Barracouta. They had no papers on board in the usual form which was necessary for a commercial ship; they had no flag, no logbook, and no manifests, and, consequently, Commander Ward thought they were not entitled to any claim of nationality, and took them, to Jamaica for adjudication, by the Vice Admiral's Court. A long correspondence ensued, and on the 6th of January, 1861, a few months afterwards, the Court declined to adjudicate without further information, and in May it declared it had no jurisdiction. The vessels had to be transferred to Havanna, to be tried by a mixed Commission; that was the cause of the delay in the case of the two first ships. As to the Laura, the delay in her case was occasioned by the owners.