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Since her conversion the "Tartar" plied on a previous voyage from San Francisco to Manila, carrying twelve hundred and nineteen men and officers, under perfect sanitary conditions, with health and comfort to all on board and without a single death.
She is exclusively employed by the United States War Department as a military transport, and is now on her homeward voyage carrying but twelve hundred and ten men and officers, which, as will be observed, is below her full capacity.
My Government is at a loss to comprehend why it is sought to apply British law to the "Tartar", unless it be on the assumption that she remains a British mercantile passenger steamship and is thereby affected by the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, under her Board of Trade license, Section 279 of that Act.
In the opinion of my Government the employment of the "Tartar" in the exclusively military service of the United States should remove her from the category of merchant shipping, and that while so employed, it is conceived that she is fully assimilated to the War Marine of the State, and as such entitled to the treatment accorded to the troop ships of a friendly Power and to exemption from the local port regulations pertaining to Commercial passenger traffic.
I have therefore the honour to request most earnestly, as an act of comity to the Government of the United States, that Your Lordship will be so good as to cause instructions to be given looking to the immediate release of the "Tartar".
I have &c.,
(Signed)
John Ridgely Carter.
(For the Ambassador)