Other neutral questioners today doubted whether a belligerent warship or merchantship merely wishing to pass through neutral territorial waters, must be searched by the neutral power.
The British case, however, is not dependent on this point. It relies on the contention that the Altmark's status as an auxiliary of the pocket battleship Graf Spee, and as the bearer of several hundred prisoners, was known all over the world. The Norwegian authorities, having decided to inspect her were thus guilty of great neglect in not conducting a thorough search, which would have revealed the fact that this German fleet auxiliary was trying to smuggle British prisoners through Norwegian territorial water.
The German claim that the Altmark is "an unarmed merchantship" caused considerable astonishment in London, It is authoritatively pointed out that there is no trace of any vessel sated the Altmark in Lloyd's register of merchant shipping. On the other hand, in the June, 1939, list of coast and ship stations' published by the International Union of Telegraphic and Wireless Communication at Berne, a German vessel named Altmark appears as a warship—Reuter,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.