anxiously-guarded

Updated: June 24, 2025

The strictest injunctions had been given both to Captain Bullock and Captain Semmes, to avoid doing anything that would by any possibility be construed into an infringement of either the municipal law, or the anxiously-guarded neutrality of England; and as the Foreign Enlistment Act clearly forbade the equipment of ships of war for belligerent uses, it was necessary that the new cruiser should leave England unarmed, and take her chance of capture, until some safe place could be found for taking her armament on board.

Raphael Semmes - The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter