The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
of State of the death;
C.take charge of stranded American ships and endeavor to save them and their cargoes until the owners could take charge; and
D.collect certain fees for taking statements and holding and inventorying estates.
Section 5 of the act provided for salaries for consuls assigned to the Barbary States, not to exceed $2,000 per person. Congress, it seemed, at last realized that consuls to Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers would be fully occupied, with neither the time nor the opportunity to act as traders in those difficult posts.
Sections 7 and 8 of the 1792 act clearly detailed the duties of consuls assisting American seamen in cases of sickness, shipwreck, or captivity, all common occurrences in those days. They were to provide for the care of such men stranded in their districts at a rate not to exceed twelve cents per day, which the U.S. government would provide. Consuls might require the masters of American ships to take on stranded seamen for transport back to the United States if they were bound in that direction. They were given sanction to fine those masters who refused. Consuls were to supervise the sale of any American ship in their districts to assure that the seller be provided enough money from the sale to send the crew home.7
From the beginning American consuls were set apart from American diplomats in that they had judicial duties prescribed by law regarding notarial acts and estates and what amounted to police functions over American shipowners and their masters. American diplomats did not have these responsibilities. If there was a conflict between a minister and a consul over a legal matter involving consular duties, the judgment of the consul was to supersede, a fact that did not always please an aggressive minister. For the most part, however, American ministers (and later ambassadors) and their secretaries were only too happy to concern themselves with court life and leave estates, shipping, and other such business to their consuls.
The Consular Act of 1792 contains nothing about assisting distressed American civilians abroad, but the care of seamen was spelled out in detail. Even in the laissez-faire time of the early Republic it was recognized that sailors needed special care and treatment, almost as wards of the government. On board a ship the master and his mates were absolute rulers; there was no challenge to this right by Congress. But the American government and other seafaring nations had to be concerned when their seamen were stranded without money on an alien shore. Foreign governments were wary of penniless alien sailors in their port cities, for these restless men often wound up in jail. Sailors were always vulnerable because they had to depend upon captains who were often irresponsible in paying them and seeing that they got home. Sailors were well known for squandering their money at the first port of call and then depending on someone to help them out, usually the consul.
The period from 1790 to 1815 was a time when the services of consuls abroad were most needed to help American seamen and shipping. For most of that time France and Britain were waging a battle for naval supremacy over the shipping lanes of the world. In such battles neutral ships were often the prime victims. Good money was to be made by merchants who could slip a ship through a blockade. Even if only one of several ships sent off made it to a belligerent port, the profit would be such as to make the enterprise worthwhile. The real loser in this game of “break the blockade” often was the ordinary seaman of a neutral country.
The rules of blockade were that a neutral ship could be stopped at sea by belligerent naval vessels or privateers, its papers and cargo could be examined, and if it were found that the ship was going to or from an enemy port or carrying a cargo that was contraband or of enemy origin, the ship could be taken as a prize. Prizes were taken to friendly ports where a prize court would determine if the ship had indeed been a legitimate prize; if so, ship and cargo were confiscated, and the cargo was sold to the highest bidder, with some of the prize money going to the crew of the capturing vessel. Prizes were lucrative, and captains were not overly scrupulous in selecting ships to be taken. Crews of seized ships were thrown upon the shore destitute.
American consuls in Britain, France, and other European countries and in the West Indies spent much of their time representing American shipping interests at prize courts and helping the crews of confiscated ships return to the United States, where they usually signed on another vessel to try again. Because of shifting alliances and varying periods of peace and war, the consul was important to the master of an American vessel. The consul could explain the existing situation to a master who might have been months at sea, a vital service for a man who had to decide whether or not to sail for certain ports. Consuls could give informed estimates of where the naval forces and privateers of belligerents might be active and hence of areas to be avoided.
The newly appointed American consuls arrived on the international scene at a time of great turbulence in shipping and commerce due to the French-English hostilities, and they also had to deal with unrest or even war within their consular districts. One of the first consuls to find himself in a difficult post was Fulwar Skipwith. Only twenty-five, a scion of one of the old Virginia families, Skipwith was better prepared for consular duties than many of his older colleagues, for at twenty-one he had been busy in the tobacco trade both in Richmond and London, where he acted for Virginian tobacco merchants.8 After a fire had destroyed his trading company and left him in strained financial circumstances, Skipwith spent some time in Paris. He needed a position to help him regain his financial standing after the disastrous fire and seized upon the new consular service as the answer. By the time he applied for a consular appointment, Skipwith was fluent in French and well acquainted with the European scene. He wrote Jefferson, describing his present position as “a gloomy one, & leads me to seek for favours which I had hoped to have lived without.”9 He asked for a consular appointment to Lisbon, Bordeaux, Cadiz, or Marseille, but received instead a commission as consul to the island of Martinique in the French West Indies.
In no position to refuse, Skipwith sailed for Martinique in 1790, arriving just in time to experience the turmoil there that had rippled out from Paris starting from the fall of the Bastille the year before. The new American consul was more or less dumped on the unfriendly shores of Martinique with no official status because the colonial French governor would not recognize Skipwith as consul, not having received instructions from the Foreign Ministry in Paris, which was otherwise occupied. But Skipwith was expected by the Secretary of State to report on the effects of the French Revolution both on the island and on the other nearby French possessions. He was also to record the claims of Americans losing property or goods because of the upheaval on the islands and to generate goodwill toward the United States.10 Moreover, he was warned not to take sides in the fighting between the forces of the French government and wealthy planters and those of the revolutionaries or “patriotic party.”11
Skipwith had hoped that as consul he would be salaried, but Secretary of State Jefferson disabused him of that idea.12 The American consul was expected to support himself by acting as an agent for American firms dealing with Martinique; but, with what amounted to a civil war going on in the French West Indies, prudent merchants were reluctant to risk their ships and cargoes. Skipwith’s case was a clear example of the difficulty of using part-time, unpaid consuls. The more dangerous the situation, the more American interests needed consular support; yet as political situations got worse, there were fewer opportunities for a consul to earn a living.
Jefferson was unsympathetic to the pleas of consuls for pay. He wrote the U.S. consul in Santo Domingo: “Those appointments are given to gentlemen who are satisfied to perform their duties in consideration of the respect and accidental advantages they may derive from them. When the consideration ceases to be sufficient, the government cannot insist on a continuance of service because this would found claims which it does not mean to authorize.”13
Skipwith took care of what business he had, but unable to make a living, he left Martinique in 1794 while the government and patriotic forces were still fighting. A British privateer captured the American ship on which he was bound for the United States and seized his private papers. Using his experience as a consular officer, Skipwith managed to help the stranded American crew return home.14 Not discouraged by the dangers he had faced or the lack of pay, Skipwith set off for Paris a year later as the new American consul general, where he was to remain for fourteen years of revolution and reaction.
By 1793, when France declared war on England and Holland, the European