Destroyers for Mexico
In late 1923/early 1924, the Mexican Navy sought to purchase army equipment and several light naval craft of gunboat or destroyer type in response to a rebellion then occurring in Vera Cruz.
This was not possible as the WNT specifically forbade the signatory powers from disposing of any war craft in any manner which would permit them to become a part of the naval forces of any country.
Agents of the Mexican government then searched the harbours of the US for privately owned vessels suitable for their naval purposes. Included in these craft were numerous old destroyers, gunboats and cruisers stricken from the USN lists and sold at auction. Many of these had been sold in 1919 and 1920, before the Washington Conference, and their sales contracts imposed no restrictions that would have prevented resale to Mexico or any other Government. Most of these had been sold for scrap, but a few had either been converted for alternate uses, or were still in the same configuration as when they were taken over from the Navy Department.
On 11 January 1924, a Mexican navy engineer, Manuel Escudero, accompanied by Captain Carlos A. Ferrer of the Mexican navy, arrived in San Antonio under the orders of the Minister of War and Marine of Mexico to inspect and receive three ex-USN destroyers which had been purchased for the Mexican Navy. The identities and current locations of these destroyers were not disclosed, and Escudero stated that the destroyers would be manned by their present crews until they arrived in a Mexican port, when they would be replaced with Mexican officers and sailors, and the ship re-registered. Escudero also advised that the destroyers would be used to blockade the port of Vera Cruz, which was held by rebels.
The owners of several ships which the Mexican Government had sought to buy made enquiries with the US Federal Government, asking for an indication of the Governments attitude relative to such sales. On 22 January the Mexican newspaper El Universal, published a statement that the Mexican Government had purchased “ships sufficient in numbers and strength to clean Mexican waters of shipping that is outside Government Authority.” This article did not specify where these ships had been obtained, and by 24 January, US Administration Officials were being quoted as indicating that sale to the Government of Mexico by American citizens of vessels intended to be added as fighting craft to the Mexican navy would be in spirit, if not in letter, a violation of the conception of the treaty obligations of the US. The next day, the New York Times reported that owners of ex-US warships were disposed to defer to the wishes of the US Government in this regard, and that an unnamed Philadelphia firm which dealt with obsolete warships was reluctant to deal with Mexican agents that had arrived in that city with a complete set of officers for the crew of one destroyer. The same article also copied a report from Mexico City that naval units were on their way to the US to man destroyers recently purchased.
In the event, no sales of ex-USN warships to Mexico were completed.
At issue here was would the sale by American citizens of ex-USN warships disposed of before the WNC to Mexico for naval purposes be a breach of Article XVIII of the WNT:
Each of the Contracting Powers undertakes not to dispose by gift, sale or any mode of transfer of any vessel of war in such a manner that such vessel may become a vessel of war in the navy of any foreign Power.
There are two discrete legal issues here: whether the WNT was binding upon private American citizens; and whether such vessels constituted vessels of war.
The binding nature of the WNT upon American citizens would appear to be unambiguously covered by the Constitution of the US, under which “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made … under the Authority of the United States shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”
The term ‘vessel of war’ is not defined in the WNT. If the vessels had been disposed of by the USN at the time of the WNT by sale to private individuals for non-military purposes, and had been deprived of those attributes which identified them as warships (such as weapons), then it could be argued that they were no longer vessels of war at the time the WNT had been signed. As the identity of the specific destroyers is not known, it is not possible to determine whether this was the case for the ships in question.