The exchange of notes on the transfer of fifty United States destroyers and the grant of naval and air bases was made in Washington on 2 September 1940, between the British Ambassador, the Marquess of Lothian, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. It is not a treaty advised by the Senate: President Roosevelt concluded it as an executive agreement. The notes were published in Foreign Relations of the United States (1940, vol. III, docs. 65–66) and as UKTS 21 (1940). It is not the later March 1941 convention that set out the detailed leases.

The British note, under instructions from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, offers the United States, freely and without consideration, 99-year leases for bases on the Avalon Peninsula and the southern coast of Newfoundland, and on the east coast and Great Bay of Bermuda. For the Bahamas, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad (Gulf of Paria), Antigua and British Guiana (within fifty miles of Georgetown), the same rights are offered in exchange for naval and military equipment the United States will transfer.

The leases are free of rent, other than compensation for private property. Within the leased areas the United States receives the rights needed for access to and defence of the bases; the adjustment of jurisdiction with the host territories is left to common agreement. Exact sites were to be fixed by experts; failing agreement, except for Newfoundland and Bermuda, the matter goes to the two foreign ministers.

Hull’s reply, on the President’s direction, accepts the proposals and announces the immediate transfer of fifty United States Navy destroyers of the twelve-hundred-ton type. We do not list ship itineraries, operational classes or later airfields. The United States was still neutral; domestic critics invoked the Neutrality Acts, and the Department of Justice treated the transaction as lawful.

The text consulted is the British note in FRUS, not the Wikipedia infobox that attributes the signatures to Roosevelt and Churchill. The destroyers passed to the Royal Navy (and in part to the Canadian navy) as the Town class; many needed repair after interwar reserve. The Bermuda and Newfoundland leases were free; the Caribbean grants were the counterpart of the transfer.

Cover: the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, seat of the Department of State at the date of the notes; we do not claim the hall. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: Destroyers-for-bases deal; FRUS 1940 vol. III d65 Lothian note.