or mixed up with a form of words meaning something different.  The expression ‘Command of the sea,’ however, in its proper and strategic sense, is so firmly fixed in the language that it would be a hopeless task to try to expel it; and as, no doubt, writers will continue to use it, it must be explained and illustrated.  Not only does it differ in meaning from ‘Dominion or Sovereignty of the sea,’ it is not even truly derived therefrom, as can be briefly shown.  ’It has become an uncontested principle of modern international law that the sea, as a general rule, cannot be subjected to appropriation.’[51] This, however, is quite modern.  We ourselves did not admit the principle till 1805; the Russians did not admit it till 1824; and the Americans, and then only tacitly, not till 1894.  Most European nations at some time or other have claimed and have exercised rights over some part of the sea, though far outside the now well-recognised ‘three miles’ limit.’  Venice claimed the Adriatic, and exacted a heavy toll from vessels navigating its northern waters.  Genoa and France each claimed portions of the western Mediterranean.  Denmark and Sweden claimed to share the Baltic between them.  Spain claimed dominion over the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, and Portugal over the Indian Ocean and all the Atlantic south of Morocco.[52] The claim which has made the greatest noise in the world is that once maintained by the kings of England to the seas surrounding the British Isles.  Like other institutions, the English sovereignty of the sea was, and was admitted to be, beneficent for a long period.  Then came the time when it ought to have been abandoned as obsolete; but it was not, and so it led to war.  The general conviction of the maritime nations was that the Lord of the Sea would provide for the police of the waters over which he exercised dominion.  In rude ages when men, like the ancients, readily ‘turned themselves to piracy,’ this was of immense importance to trade; and, far from the right of dominion being disputed by foreigners, it was insisted upon by them and declared to carry with it certain duties.  In 1299, not only English merchants, but also ’the maritime people of Genoa, Catalonia, Spain, Germany, Zealand, Holland, Frisia, Denmark, Norway, and several other places of the empire’ declared that the kings of England had from time immemorial been in ’peaceable possession of the sovereign lordship of the sea of England,’ and had done what was ’needful for the maintenance of peace, right, and equity between people of all sorts, whether subjects of another kingdom or not, who pass through those seas.’[53] The English sovereignty was not exercised as giving authority to exact toll.  All that was demanded in return for keeping the sea safe for peaceful traffic was a salute, enforced no doubt as a formal admission of the right which permitted the (on the whole, at any rate) effective police of the waters to be maintained.  The Dutch in the seventeenth century objected to the