Blockade box unreachable?

[RJCowan]

Situation in our PBEM game: Spain and Turkey just declared war upon each other over Palestine. Turkey was sieging Tripoli, which is a British Free State. Britain is not allied to either Turkey or Spain, and has given access to neither.

When war broke out, the Turkish warships withdrew to safe haven in Constantinople. Our wily Turk left the Transport fleet in the blockade box off Tripoli to continue blocking supply to the defenders.

"Yay", thinks the Spanish player, "I get to capture the Turkish transports, I just need to move my smallest fleet into the blockade box."

Imagine his surprise and shame on finding that there is no way for Spanish ships to reach the Turkish transports! How to explain to His Majesty that, since the unarmed transports were inside the 3-mile limit, he was forced to sail away without engaging them?

This is a problem with making the port an attribute of the land province, and the blockade box an attribute of the port. Without British permission to enter the province, the Spanish cannot "move into the port" to trigger the "do you want to clear the blockade box?" message.

I assume, by the same principle, that it would be impossible to enter a neutral port to attack enemy ships inside the port, because no permission was granted to enter that land province.

Am I missing something here? Is there a workaround I don't see? I have told the fleet sitting in the sea zone to attack enemy fleets, and chosen the transports as the target, but until I end the naval move I won't know if that did anything at all (and doubt it will).

[Marshall Ellis]

Can you send me this game?