In the beginning of 1883, owing to representations from British firms interested in South West Africa as to German activity in that part, the British Foreign Office obtained a report from their Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin, and were again lulled into complaisant inactivity by being assured that the amount of "protection" intended to be afforded by the German Government to Luderitz's "commercial Colony" was precisely what would be granted to any other subject of the Empire who had settled abroad and acquired property. It would be a mistake, the Foreign Office was notified, to suppose that the German Government had any intention of establishing crown Colonies or of assuming a Protectorate over a territory acquired by a traveller or explorer. In September the German inquiries of the Foreign Office assumed a more pertinent nature, and to the uncultured mind would carry an alarming significance. The British Foreign Office was asked "quite unofficially" and for the private information of the German Government, whether Great Britain claimed suzerainty rights over Angra Pequena and the adjacent territory; and if so, to explain upon what grounds the claim was based. This necessitated another reference to the Cape of Good Hope; but in the meantime a party of English traders, disgusted at the delay at home in annexing the south-west coast, resolved to take action on their own account, and set off for Angra Pequena with the fixed determination--of which they gave the Government due notice--of expelling the Germans. Instructions were immediately sent out for a gunboat to proceed to the spot to prevent a collision between the British and Germans, as the whole question of jurisdiction was still the "subject of inquiry." H.M.S. _Boadicea_ proceeded on instructions to Angra Pequena, and her Commander was able to report, on her return to Simon's Bay on the Cape station, that no collision had taken place. In November, 1883, the British Foreign Office intimated to the German Government that a report on South West Africa was in course of preparation, but that while British sovereignty had not been proclaimed excepting over Walfisch Bay and the islands, the Government considered that any claim to sovereignty or jurisdiction by a foreign Power between the Portuguese border and the frontier of the Cape Colony (the Orange River) would infringe Great Britain's legitimate rights. Early in 1884 the German Government, in a dispatch to the British Foreign Office, pointed out that the fact that British sovereignty had not been proclaimed over South West Africa permitted of doubt as to the legal claim of the British Government, as well as to the practical application of the same; the German Government having clearly in mind the avowal of a fixed intention on the part of the British Government not to extend jurisdiction over the coast territory excepting in so far as Walfisch Bay and the islands were concerned.