LAND fe? WATER 
November 28, 1918 
Maritime Prize of War : By E. S. Roscoe 
GENIAL Admiral Croft would never have become 
the tenant of Kellynch Hall, neither would 
agreeable Captain Wentworth have married Anne 
Elliot but for their good fortune in making sub- 
stantial captures and consequently in obtaining 
large simis of prize money. Prize money is, in fact, a vital 
element in Miss Austin's Persuasion. This is not surprising, 
for the story was written after more than twenty years of 
European warfare, during which British sailors and ship- 
owners, men of the Royal Navj' and on privateers, 
had secured prizes — more or less valuable — in all the seas 
of the world. The novelist's observant c^'e enabled her to 
note a resulting phase of contemporary English social life 
and to leave to later generations a record of it. With the return 
of peace in 1815 interest in the subject died away ; it has 
revived, but languidly, during the present war the maritime 
characteristics of which have differed so markedly from those 
of the great struggle of the eighteenth century. The Prize 
Court has pronounced much valuable cargo and some vessels 
to be good and lawful prize, but its individual importance to 
officers and men of the Navy is slight. ' The keen personal 
interest, the realised hopes and the disappointed expectations, 
not less than the remarkable commercial speculation which 
centred in privateering, before it was abolished by the 
Declaration of Paris in 1856, have entirely departed. 
Little imagination is required to realise a naval force in 
early medieval times. It was a group of small vessels fitted 
out and manned by burghers and mariners summoned from 
their homes to assist their sovereign in a maritime war. 
The reward of their crews was not the success of the cause 
, for which they fought, but the booty which they could seize. 
Prize was pay. 
From an early period in English historj' the right of cap- 
ture constantly became more regularised. The first fact of 
importance was the recognition of the constitutional theory 
that all prize belongs to the Crown, in technical language 
is a " Droit of the Crown," and can become the property of 
captors only through the bounty of the Crown testified by 
a grant. Lord Stowell in 1803, and again in 1806, emphasised 
this principle. It is visible at a far earlier period. In the 
reign of King John an instance occurs of a grftnt of prize 
from the sovereign. "Know ye" it runs, as translated, 
"that we have granted to the crews of the galleys, which 
Thomas of Galway has sent to us, one lialf of the gains which 
they may itake in captures from our enemies." Another 
example occurs in 1337, when Edward III., uniting a recogni- 
tion of the prerogative of the sovereign with his personal 
bounty, made the following Order : — " In consideration of 
the activity and worth of our well-beloved William of Gose- 
ford, who, with others in a galley of ours, bravely gave chase 
to a ship called the Cog of Flanders, in which was the Bishop 
of Glasgow and other Scottish enemies of ours, and after 
slaying some of our aforesaid enemies captured her ; we 
desiring to deal graciously with him on that account, have 
given him the aforesaid ship and all her apparel, which, as 
a capture from our enemies aforesaid belongs to us. And 
therefore we command you that without delay you deliver 
to him, William, the (same) ship, which, as it is said, lies in 
the aforesaid harbour, together with all her apparel, to keep 
(for himself) as a gift from us." 
From those early days this royal prerogative has been 
claimed and clearly recognised, though it has had, from time 
to time, to be asserted with decision and authority. It 
appears in war after war, in proclamations, and in Prize 
Acts, as in a Statute passed in 1708, which enacted that 
" if any ship or ships of war, privateer merchant ship, or 
other vessel shall be taken as prize byTler Majesty's ships 
of war or private£rs and adjudged as lawful prize in any of 
Her Majesty's Courts of Admiralty, the flag officer or officers, 
commander or commanders and other officers, seamen and 
others, who shall be actually on board such ship or ships of 
war, or privateers, which shall so take such prize or prizes, 
shall, after condemnation, have the sole interest and property 
in such prize or prizes so taken and adjudged to their own 
use without further account to be given for the same." 
This grant of the Crown covered only .captures made 
at sea during hostilities by commissioned vessels, that 
is, by ships of the Royal Navj' or by privateers sailing 
under Letters of Marque. The object of the grant 
was tersely stated in the same statute : it was for the 
better and more effectual encouragement of the sea 
service. This fact excludes all enemy property seized 
in port : the difference is important, since it is con- 
stantly and erroneously assumed by those unfamiliar with 
the subject that all the property condemned by the Prize 
Court during the present war would, under former condi- 
tions, have found its way into the pockets of the officers 
and seamen of the Royal Navy. Those conditions ceased 
in August, 1914, when an Order in Council declared that the 
conditions governing the distribution of proceeds of prizes, 
when such proceeds are granted to the officers and men of 
the Fleet, required modification to bring them into accord 
with modern conditions. It then went on to say that there 
should be instituted a system of prize bounties or gratuities 
for more general distribution. Tlie Great M'ar has made 
many changes, and in an historical review of maritime prize 
of war one perceives that this Order in Council concludes the 
practice of which the first documentary record seems to be 
the grant by King John in 1205. Prize money remains, 
but has ceased to be the personal reward of the courage, 
energy, or fine seamanship of individual captors and has be- 
come only a collective war bonus distributable out of a limited 
fund rateably among the officers and men of the Royal Navy. 
The amount of this fund will be fixed by the tribunal whichis 
constituted by the recently passed Naval Prize Act, a body 
which will have to investigate judicially the circumstances of 
each seizure in order to ascertain whether the proceeds of it 
are Droits of the Crown or Droits of Admiralty. Here 
again we find an historical origin for the distinction between 
these two classes of maritime prize. To the Lord High 
Admiral were granted prizes made at sea by non-commis- 
sioned captors and all property seized in port — these in tech- 
nical language were Droits of Admiralty. In addition he 
received, in many instances, one-tenth of the value of prizes 
at sea. 
Exchequer Control 
The grant by the Sovereign to captors and to the Lord 
High Admiral left little in the way of prize money to the 
Crown, only the proceeds of a few vessels which were driven 
into port or were seized before a declaration of war. So far, 
however, as the adverse rights of the Lord High Admiral 
and of the Cro\vn were concerned the conflict between them 
ceased in 1707, when Prince George of Denmark surrendered 
his rights as Lord High Admiral to the Crown. All these 
Droits were, on the accession of William IV., when a new 
Civil List was prepared, relinquished to the Exchequer. 
In the first grant of prize money which exists in the national 
records the vessels were galleys. It recalls a primiti\e state 
of maritime life when the same craft could be loaded with 
bales of wool or crammed with armed men. It was a long 
time before the mercantile and the King's Navy became 
separate and distinct classes of vessels. When this separa- 
tion was accomplished there sprang up a division in maritime 
prize. The frigate which captured a Spanish galleon took 
a rich prize, a frigate which destroyed a man of war received 
no pecuniary reward. So it was considered desirable that 
financial encouragement which existed through the Royal Grant 
for the capture of merchantmen should be given by a direct 
payment from the Treasury for the destruction or capture of 
armed vessels, and a system of Prize Bounty,or " Head Money," 
was established to reward success in the destruction of armed 
vessels. As a system distinct and regulated by Pariiament, 
it first appears during the Commonwealth in an Act passed 
in 1649, by which in respect of every ship of war burnt, sunk, 
or destroyed there was to be paid for an Admiral's ship /20 
per gun, for a Vice-Admiral's £16, and for other ships £10. 
This was the beginning of the modern practice which, e.xcept 
for variations in the amount of the bounty, has continued 
unaltered to the present time. Like mercantile prize this 
fightmg prize as it may be called had, and still has, an ele- 
ment of uncertainty inevitable from its basis which was, 
and is, success in destruction. 
A brief sketch such as the foregoing, though it renders 
outlines clear, is quite inadequate to reproduce the antag- 
onisms, the influences, and the colour of the progress of 
maritime prize. We are now looking back over, at least, 
seven centuries of eventful history, crowded with varied and 
dramatic incidents and constant international developments. 
In the past the subject of prize of war was of paramount 
importance to the seamen of Great Britain. Amidst 
prosaic and semi-legal records are crowded individual 
heroism and hopes, disappointments and successes, lives 
lost and fortunes gained, constituting no inconsiderable 
portion of the long story of the British Navy. 
