MR. GIBSON BOWLESTo ask the First Lord of the Treasury are His Majesty's Government aware that the Russian Volunteer Fleet ship "Dmitri Donskoi" was allowed to take on board at Port Said 500 tons of coal, upon her captain giving an undertaking upon his honour that his ship on leaving Port Said would proceed at once and by the direct route to the port of Cadiz; that on leaving Port Said, instead of proceeding to Cadiz, in accordance with her captain's undertaking, the "Dmitri Donskoi" remained in the offing between Port Said and Damietta for three days, during which her captain stopped and examined the papers of six merchant vessels about to enter the Suez Canal; and that, a few days later, he continued the same practice off Alexandria; and, in view of these facts, what steps do His Majesty's Government propose to take in order to secure that belligerent ships of war shall not be supplied at British ports with coal to be used for conducting the operations of war.
(Answered by Mr. A.J. Balfour.) The Russian vessel in question, which was not one of the Volunteer Fleet but a man-of-war, after being supplied with 500 tons of coal at Port Said, on the declaration made by her captain that she intended to proceed direct to Cadiz en route for Cronstadt, proceeded to sea, and during the next three days stopped and examined the papers of six merchant vessels, two of them British. In the view of His Majesty's Government any ship which uses the coal supplied to her for purposes other than that for which it was obtained should not in the future be accorded coaling facilities.