A few days after the decree of the 20th of June was published, the Costa Rican schooner, San José, commanded by Gilbert Morton, entered the port of San Juan del Sur. She had been purchased from her former owner, Alvarado, by Mariano Salazar, and he had made Morton nominal half-owner of the schooner, supposing she might thereby get the right to carry American colors. The American vice-consul at Realejo, one Giauffreau, gave the schooner what Morton called a sailing letter; and the vice-consul, according to all accounts, was either so ignorant or so neglectful of his duties as to permit the vessel to fly the American flag and to be cleared from the port of Realejo under this pretended sailing letter. The commandant at Chinandega, a Cuban, by the name of Golibard, had been ordered away by Rivas because he refused to forsake the Americans; and Golibard was aboard the San José when she arrived at San Juan del Sur. Morton, thinking he could impose on the port authorities with his sailing letter from Giauffreau, had not hesitated to enter the harbor; and he, as well as Salazar, supposed they might, under the American flag, drive a profitable trade with the schooner during hostilities between Nicaragua and the other States. But the San José had not been many hours in the port of San Juan before she was seized, the charge against her being that she was without a flag and without lawful papers. The schooner was American-built and had passed from the flag of the United States to that of Costa Rica. Even if she had then been re-sold to an American citizen she could not have recovered her original character without an act of Congress. Morton, after the seizure, appealed for relief to the U. S. States Minister at Granada: but on a careful examination of the subject Mr. Wheeler was satisfied that the schooner, far from being entitled to protection by American authority, was really amenable for an abuse of the American flag. The San José was, therefore, condemned by a court of admiralty jurisdiction at the port of San Juan; and being forfeited to the government of Nicaragua, she was converted into a schooner-of-war, bearing the flag of the Isthmian Republic.