So when a privateer takes a prize the officers and crew are entitled to a share of the wealth. For exmple, the captain might get two shares, the quartermaster might get one and a half shares, and general members of the crew each get one share. Is it a percentage? I’ve never heard it fully explained and thought someone here might.
Marc
Of course, that’s all after the monarch or government they’re working for takes their majority chunk.
Who came up with the idea that any of the crew are entitled to any significant share? It wasn’t uncommon for crews to be composed of slaves who were lucky enough to get fed, so there was no distribution of shares to be done.
OTOH, if you’re thinking of pirates, conditions for the crew were apt to be even worse, except they weren’t operating under a letter of marque, so they didn’t automatically owe most of what they took to anyone.
Shares are your fraction of the total haul. For example if you’ve got 8 pirates entitled to one share each plus a captain who gets two shares that’s a total of 10 shares, each being worth 10% of the total. 8 crew get 10% each (one share) and the captain gets 20% (two shares).
Dunno how ships with letters of marque operated; I’d assume that “The Crown” or whomever was giving them authority to knock off enemy vessels took a certain percentage off the top. Kind of like lower-ranking Mafia members kicking up a percentage of their take to the local boss.
Regarding true pirate ships (independents), I have read and seen (on documentaries) that crews were surprisingly democratic; the captain, for example, served at the pleasure of the crew - if he was a good leader and didn’t piss everyone off they’d keep him in charge, but he couldn’t be a real despot for very long because eventually he’d piss off enough of the crew and he’d wake up some night with his throat cut.
The basic unit of measure of booty, as defined by the International Standards Organization, is the ba-donk-a-donk.
I don’t recall the exact percentages applied, but in the British Navy around Napoloen’s time, frigates who captured a prize split the value into 8th’s. (Presuming the government decided it wanted whatever it was that had been captured)
The split went along the lines of 3/8th’s to the captain, 2/8’s split amongst the officers, 1/8th to the admiral, 1/8th amongst the NCO’s and 1/8th split amongst the crew. I do however stand to be corrected on the actual 1/8th’s assigned to each group/person.
There were many captains eligible and capable of being promoted into a Ship of the Line, but remained in Frigates by choice because of the potential for prize money.
The above however is a military ship, not strictly speaking a Privateer with a Letter of Marque. The split on a private ship would be at the whim of the owner of the ship really, but given that they were privately funded I would presume the ships owner would keep the lions share for upkeep & supplies if nothing else.
[edited for a typo]
Slight nitpick, but I doubt his body would even bother to wake up once his throat was cut. (or maybe I’m wrong and it would. What ever happened to gabriela?)
Yes - from what I’ve read the local Admiral would make the decision as to whether to “buy in” a captured ship, and there would be an official valuer to determine what the ship was worth considering her tonnage, state of repair, equipment etc. Also any useful cargo aboard her was worth whatever the market said it was. If the Admiral decided that a ship was useless then she wouldn’t be bought in. Then what? Gunnery practice, I guess.
All friendly ships in sight at the time were entitled to a share - the presumption was that the mere presence of another ship influenced the victim’s decision as to whether to run, fight or surrender, and where she could go if she ran.
Still an attractive prospect I think. Otherwise, why would so many privateers sign up for Queen Anne’s War, the American Revolution, or the Quasi-War?
I didn’t place a date on my question but I’m mainly thinking of sailors from the late 17th through the early 19th century. While I’m aware that there were slaves who worked as sailors, I’m not aware that the majority of sailors working as privateers, on military ships, or even most merchant ships were slaves. If you know something different I’d sure be interested in finding out.
Also, sailors in the British Navy who were lucky enough to be part of an action that seized a lot of gold could expect some compensation. It wasn’t unheard of for some lucky sailors to return home relatively wealthy people. Though it was a bit like hitting the lottery and most of them didn’t return as wealthy men. Wish I could find a cite for this but I can’t find any of my books.
Marc
Thanks for the answers everyone. I appreciate it.
Marc
Piracy is as old as shipping so it’s a bit hard to answer generically. However, in the so called “golden age” of piracy (the one that has given rise to the romantic pirate stereotype) you are largly wrong, from what I’ve read. The captain could be deposed and stay on, though he might be a mutiny risk. Captain Roberts, one of the most successful, was deposed, stayed on, was abandoned in a small vessel, then became captain again.
I would imagine if you were to get your throat cut while you were asleep, you would feel it, waking you up before you died.
My ex-EMT opinion would be, yes, you would wake up and feel it, not for long though.
The 4th note at the bottom of this page reads as follows:
Although rare, this form of prize money could be enormous. When the British defeated the Spanish in 1762 at Havana, the commanders in chief each received £70,000 (OliverWarner, The British Navy: A Concise History 74 (Thames & Hudson, 1975)). In another instance, in 1799 three frigates brought two Spanish ships into Plymouth. According to David Howarth, Sovereign of the Seas: The Story of Britain and the Sea 227 (Atheneum, 1974),‘‘Each frigate captain got £40,730, lieutenants £5,091, warrant officers £2,468, midshipmen £791 and seamen and marines £182 4s.’’ A seaman’s pay at the time was about £14 per year.
The constituent crew of the frigates involved is unknown to me.
If we take the USS Santee as typical, that would be 480 officers and enlisted.
I was trying to be amusing to make a point 
Point being that the captain kept his job as long as the crew felt like he was doing it well. If enough of them didn’t like him they could put him out of the job, by busting him back to crewman or killing him or something in-between.
I’m having a lot of trouble finding a citation, but I was under the impression that the amount of shares was variable based on the size of the crew.
In other words, there was a general agreement that the number of shares assigned by position were fixed–a set number for the captain, a set number for the other officers, a set number for the idlers, and a set number for seamen. However, if one ship carried two second-lieutenants and 80 seamen and a different ship carried three second-lieutenants and 110 seamen, the overall number of shares would be higher on the second ship, so that the percentage that each share was worth would change. Part of the Articles dealt with the payment to those who were first signed on, but who later died through mischance or action, so the numbers would have been relatively known at the beginning of the voyage and would not drastically change as crew might have been lost through the voyage.
This page notes (for the British privateer Mars),
C. Kieth Wilbur, in his Pirates and Patriots of the Revolution lists a example of the shares in some “typical” ship’s articles as
CAPTAIN SHARES 8 STEWARD SHARES 2
FIRST LIEUTENANT 4 SAILMAKER 2
SECOND LIEUTENANT 4 GUNNER'S MATE 1 1/2
MASTER 4 BOATSWAIN'S MATE 1 1/2
SURGEON 4 CARPENTER'S MATE 1 1/2
OFFICER OF MARINES 2 COOPER 1 1/2
PRIZE MASTER 2 SURGEON'S MATE 1 1/2
CARPENTER 2 ARMORER 2
GUNNER 2 SERGEANT - MARINES 2
BOATSWAIN 2 COOK 2
MASTER'S MATES 2 GENTLEMEN VOL[sup]TRS[/sup] 1
CAPTAIN'S CLERKS 2 BOYS UNDER 16 YEARS 1/2
which is similar to the list from the Mars.
When booty (or anything else, including corporate control) is divided by shares, you count each person’s shares, total them up, and divide the booty by the number of shares. The allocation of shares to each person is the complex part; the rest is 3rd- and 4th-grade arithmetic.
I wonder how pirate crews determined value for allocating shares. Let’s say that the Dread Pirate Roberts and his band of seagoing cutthroats have successfully captured a merchant vessel carrying spices from the East. Aboard the vessel are X tons of cloves, nutmeg, and mace. In the captain’s cabin, under lock and key, a small trunk of saffron. The captain was a relatively wealthy man, but as they say, you can’t take it with you - all his expensive clothing, snuff tobacco, fine silver and gold dining utensils, etc, are still in his cabin. Also in the captain’s cabin is a new and very expensive clock for navigation, which the ship’s owner purchased with loaned money; he was hoping to pay off the loan from the proceeds of this voyage.
So now the pirate crew has a ship, various sundry supplies, cargo, equipment, and various small valuables. What (and how) do they parcel out to each pirate? Do they separate the whole thing by volume or weight, and give each man his share in pounds? Do they sail the prize into Tortuga, sell everything on the open market, and distribute the shares in gold or similarly negotiable assets? Do they have some sort of table, prepared by the pirate ship’s purser (every good pirate crew has a pirate accountant!), which allows them to quickly estimate the worth of each item, and distribute ownership to the crew on the spot, and let each man sell or keep his share when they reach port?
After all, these are pirates. Scurvy sea dogs. Cut your throat as soon as look at you. There’s a lot of room for cheating in determining what counts as what for shares - and I’m certain that any pirate crew was keenly aware of this, and the apportioning of shares was watched very, very carefully by the entire crew.
My guess is that after the loot was sold, the cash was dispersed according to the share table. The crew would need cash for hookers and grog. Trying to get a rimmer for a half pound of nutmeg would be…clumsy to say the least.
Given the value of nutmeg at the time, I think you’d find that the rimmerer would overlook any clumsiness in the method of payment.