In their decision, the arbitrators

In their decision, the arbitrators concluded with regard to the “Alabama” that two of the three agreed rules had been violated and, with regard to the “Florida”, that all three of those rules had been violated. The arbitrators awarded the United States the then-staggering sum of $15,500,000 in gold. The British government cannot have been too surprised by this verdict, as it surely knew that it had violated the rules of neutrality as formulated and agreed to in the Treaty of Washington. One unusual clause of the treaty sets out the nuanced position of the UK on the issue of the applicable law.