Still no word from Mr. Schenck.

Whatever the reason is for the under-measurement of this particular arc of the
twelve-mile circle, it seems purposeful. We just don't yet know the purpose.

The Supremes consistently uphold Delaware's right to:

...the 12-mile circle (that is, within the circle the radius of
which is 12 miles, and the center of which is the building
used prior to 1881 as the courthouse at New Castle...

However when they arrive at a description of that short and detached part of the
circle's lower crossing of the left half of the Delaware River, they give us
"the arc of a circle, the radius of which is 18,216.16 meters or 59,764.2 feet."
This is a very precise measurement, but it is off by more than two-thirds of a
mile!

The elusive explanation for this purposeful under-measurement should be found in
the report of the Special Master appointed by the Supremes in 1930. Once again,
we are foiled by lack of on-line access to the reports of Special Masters in
these state boundary cases.

I want to propose one possibility, upon which I would stake nothing:

The badly under-measured arc was the SECOND previously unsurveyed arc of DENJ in
the Court's 1935 decree. The first was "the extension southeastward of the
eastern arc of the compound curve of the boundary between Delaware and
Pennsylvania" (specified as surveyed by Hodgkins of the USC&GS in 1893) from
DENJPA in the middle of the Delaware River to the mean low-water line on the
left bank. While the Special Master was projecting Hodgkins's "compound curve"
beyond DENJPA, he might have mathematically projected its last demarcated
segment on around to the lower crossing of the river many miles away. Any
inherent irregularity in Hodgkins's curve might have been compounded by distance
to result in the significant under-measurement. While this hardly seems fair to
Delaware, it might have been put forward on the grounds that Delaware had
accepted Hodgkins's demarcation.

I realize that this is far-fetched.

Lowell G. McManus
Leesville, Louisiana, USA