The one source of income which Alaska was known to possess in those days was its seal fisheries. A great herd of fur-bearing seals lived in the Alaskan waters, and the Government expected to make these seals very profitable to it.
Under the Russian rule, the fur seal regions had been very carefully protected, and when the United States bought Alaska the Government decided to care for the animals in the same way that the Russians had done, allowing only a certain number of seals to be killed each year.
The fisheries were leased to a company called the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco, which had the entire rights to them, under certain rules and regulations laid down by the Government.
Soon after Alaska and its seal fisheries came into the possession of the United States, English and American vessels—the latter not belonging to the Commercial Company—entered the Bering Sea, and slaughtered any seals they could reach, without regard to the proper rules for seal fishing.
The Company complained to the Government, and in 1887 this seal poaching had become such a serious matter that the United States ordered her revenue cutters up to Bering Sea to protect her interests.
Several ships were captured by the revenue-officers, and most of them were British vessels.
This opened the way for the dispute between Great Britain and the United States, which has been going on ever since, and has been one of the most troublesome questions our rulers have had to deal with.
Great Britain claimed that she had a perfect right to fish in Bering Sea, and the United States insisted that she had bought all the rights to the fishing when she bought Alaska.
After the quarrel had dragged on for five years, it was finally, in 1892, decided to arbitrate it.
The Committee appointed for this purpose met in Paris, France, in 1893, and finally decided that Russia had never had any rights in the Bering Sea, beyond the usual rights which all countries have of controlling the seas for three miles out from their borders.