!
260398
W. & S. Ltd.--16679-6,000---10-07.
#
-26993-6,000-1-08.
In any further communica-
tion on this subject, please quote
No.
13228.
and address-
The Under Secretary of Stale,
Foreign Office,
London.
C. O.
16837
RECO
11 MAY 08 FOREIGN OFFICE
May
459
1908.
Confidential.
Sir:-
I en directed by Secretary Sir E. Grey to trans-
mit to you, to be laid before the Secretary of State
for the Colonies, a copy of a letter addressed by
Messrs Newman and Langton Wilkinson to Mr. Spencer
Wilkinson and by him communicated to this Department
suggesting the annexation by His Majesty's Government
of the islet of Pratas in the China Seas.
This ques-
tion has previously come before the notice of this
Department as the following facts will shew,
The Board of Trade having represented to this
Department in 1857 the desirability of erecting a
lighthouse on the Pratas Shoals owing to the number
of shipwrecks occurring thereon, it was ascertained
that there was no definite information in this Office
as to the ownership of those Islands which consist of
Islets, reefs and Shoals, but as they did not appear
to
The Under Secretary of State,
Colonial Office.