Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1892 — AN OUTRAGE ON THE SEA. [ARTICLE]

AN OUTRAGE ON THE SEA.

SeaJing Schooners Seized by a Russian Vessel. Hold, la Priaon, and Their Boats Conn*cat«a—lnternational Trouble Possible, The American bark Majestic, frwa Pctropanlovski, reached Victoria, ... U., on the 31stTAboard ot her were the captains aud crews of the four sealing schooners— Rosie, Olsen, Ariel and Willie McGowanflying the British flag, and'the American schooner, C.JB. Whi to, of San Francisco. Theso four were sealing off Copper Island, abont forty and fifty miles, during tho latter part of July, when the Russian war ship Scabraka. mounting sixteen guns and the ftfr company’s steamer Kodiak, bearing tho Governor of Bering Island, rounded them up one by one, sent tho schooners tp bo held at Petropaulovslcj, and made the captains and crews prisoners. Tho former objected to tho seizures i claiming they were free men on free water, whereupon the marine pricked them with the polntof their bayonets and informed them that- there was such a place as Siberia for those who spoke too loudly of freedom.

Both the British and American skippers recognized that it was no time for talking. Still they ventured to protest that they were away outsido the three-mile limit, aud were met with tho astounding information from the officers of the Scabraka “Russia Is sovereign over the water a thousand miles from her shores.” The captain of the Russian cruiser based his action on tho ground that Russia exorcised jurisdiction over all the land and water westward of the line of demarkation. After being taken aboard the Scabraka the masters of tho schooners wore asked to sign a paper written in Russian and explained by the interpreter as an acknowledgment that lie had been scaling In Russian waters. Tho skippers pro- . tested and were told that those who did notsign would bo sent to Vladivostock to bo court-manttaled, and then sent to the Siberian mines. Under compulsion the captains signod and they and the crews then underwent a taste of Russian prison tffij, twenty-one of them being kept for days in a room 11x11 feet, with a leaky roof and a broken floor. The men were finally tamed out, and the Majestic coming that way, a contract was entered into for transportation to American or British soil, and In the evening tho prisoners were shipped away on board, no particnlar effort being made by the guards to detain them. The Majestic sailed at night, and tho next morning thd Seabraka started out on another hunting cruise, tho schooners being the game sought.