User talk:CharlesRobertCountofNesselrode

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Hello Charles Robert,

the reason why I put in the bibliographic data of Skaggs 1994 is the Guano Act claim from 1889. To be valid, the claimant (i.e. Capt. Andrew A. Rosehill) had to file a bond within a certain span of time. As this did not happen (presumably for financial reasons) the claim was invalid. So for the Japanese in 1898 Marcus Island was a 'terra nullius'. Most of contemporaneous Western reference works were not aware of that, so e.g. W. T. Brigham's 'Index to the islands of the Pacific Ocean' (Memoirs of the B. P. Bishop Museum, Vol. 1, No. 2) from 1900, and several others are listing the island erroneously as an American possession. Best regards, B. Welsch