1892 JOINT RESOLUTIONS.

questing the Senate Committee on Armed Services to hold
hearings to obtain information and to recommend to the
Senate appropriate legislation defining and delimiting ter-
ritorial waters of the United States.

WHEREAS, the State of Maryland is the owner of approxi-
mately 1, 600, 000 acres of submerged lands covered by the
tidal waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, as
well as some 61, 000 acres of submerged lands of the Atlantic
coastal shelf within three miles from the shore, subject only
to Federal powers of navigation, commerce and national de-
fense; and

WHEREAS,, in 1775 the State of Maryland succeeded to all
rights of Lord Baltimore, and, as a sovereign, the State also
became entitled to the recognized public law rights of a
sovereign to land within its borders under navigable waters;
and

WHEREAS, by virtue of the Federal Constitution, ratified by
Maryland on April 28, 1788, the State of Maryland's rights
to these submerged lands under navigable waters were recog-
nized and forever formalized, subject only to delegated Fed-
eral powers of navigation, commerce and national defense;
and

WHEREAS, for more than one hundred and seventy years the
United States government, Congress and the Supreme Court
have uniformly, unanimously and consistently recognized that
title and the rights which accompany it; and

WHEREAS, in 1937, for the first time and as an original
proposition, the Federal government began to assert, through
the agency of Secretary Ickes, claim to the marginal seas by
reason of the fact that oil was being extracted in those areas
by the States; and

WHEREAS, the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1947,
in a suit instituted by the Department of Justice entitled
U. S. v. California, 332 U. S. 19, overthrew more than a
hundred years of established precedents in a might makes
right decision and held that the United States had paramount
rights over the submerged lands adjacent to the shores of
California, while not deciding the question of ownership; and

WHEREAS, in a subsequent decision, entitled Toomer v. Wit-
sell, 334 U. S. 385, decided in 1948, the Supreme Court held
that the power of South Carolina to regulate fishing in the