So I’m reading the first book in the Aubrey/Maturin series and a question came to mind regarding prize ships and prize crews.
It seems that when a prize is taken, a small crew is placed aboard the prize and then it’s sailed back to Minorca or Malta where the prize agent does his thing. How safe it was to let the prize ship with a small crew go on its own way whilst you went looking for other prizes? Often, I’m guessing, the prize might be damaged or at the least undermanned. More often than not, I’m certain that the prize would be a merchant ship rather than a ship of war. Given all that, wouldn’t that make for easy pickings for even the smallest enemy naval ship out there? Of course the enemy would have to find it, but still given the number of ships in the Med, contacts seemed to be rather inevitable (and thus the need for escorts).
Obviously, the prize crew method had to have worked, otherwise the practice wouldn’t have been widespread (or was it even widespread?). I can’t imagine fresh prizes were protected under some international admiralty law, especially in a time of war.
Prizes did occasionally get re-taken. But the usual tactic was for the prize to be sailed directly to a safe port, and to be escorted at least part of the way there if in dangerous waters. The chances of getting spotted were slight. If the prize was sailing solo, no-one would know of the capture, and if spotted by an enemy vessel, they would assume the prize was just one of their own merchant vessels or a fleet unit. If the prizes were part of a larger action, then there was still a victorious fleet around to watch out for.
The sea was bigger then. When you took a ship, nobody sent a radio message to the Admiralty telling them to send out ships to look for the captured prize. I ship was pretty unlucky to get spotted by a Man-o-war in the first place. To get spotted again, by the Other Side would be really remarkable bad luck. Almost unimaginable.
I recall Hornblower got captured while on a prize in the Channel. Again, he almost got nabbed by a coast-guard while he was on an undermanned provisions ship. Of course Hornblower’s career was marked by remarkable events.
It’s likely the size of the prize crew and the amount of escort it received depended on a host of things including:
Size of prize
Speed of prize
Anticipated weather
Distance to port
Liklihood of hostile encounters enroute
Number of prisoners to be carried
How undermanned the ship would become with prize crew away
Ship’s orders
How soon the prize crew might be expected back on board
etc.
According to C.S,. Forester’s The Hornblower Companion, a captured crew tended to be cowed, kept below decks, and easy to control. He wondeed, in that book, what would happen if such a captured crew was not cowed – how they could retake the ship if led by a spirited and inspired leader. The result showed up in the book you’re citing, the unfinished Hornblower During the Crisis. Forester also showed captured ships rebelling in less inspired fashion in Lieutenant Hornblower. But i suspect that most of the time, Forester was correct, and prizes weren’t re-taken by their own crews (although they might be recaptured by other enemy ships.)
In regards to being “undermanned,” keep in mind that the reason warships carried so many people was because they needed them for fighting, not day-to-day sailing. So a crew that was to simply sail a ship for a brief voyage could be much smaller then a crew that would be expected to fight.
It would also depend on whether the captured ship’s captain and officers had given their parole; if so, they would be on their honour not to make any effort to re-take the vessel.
Retaking prizes was actually not a rare event. I’ve read of numerous cases where it has happened. However, it did not happen so often as to push the risk of sailing a prize unescorted beyond the limit of profitability.
True, but not always effective; Forrester frequently (but not always) paints the gentlemen-officers of the sailing navies of the 17th Century with a bit more romantic chivalry than probably existed; I imagine that a compliment of ship’s officers were more likely to break parole (if they could do so deniably) than be held prisoner in a British prison. But it also serves to bear in mind that for the most part, ships crews were conscripts, pressed into servitude as near-slaves. They could be whipped and beaten by anyone from petty officers on up, and executed at will by the captain, and therefore weren’t much apt to show much loyalty to their own commanders over those of another nation; indeed, many British ships were crewed by a wide variety of nationalities whose obedience stemmed more from their daily tot of rum and the lash of a petty officer’s whip than allegiance to their nation of birth.
Not really. It is not as though there are books or web sites devoted to the issue.
Generally I have come across examples when reading of the histories of particular ships or captains, occasionally of campaigns. There will be a reference to someone taking a prize (or losing a ship they were supposed to defend), followed by a later note that the prize had been retaken. It was common enough that in his commetaries on law, Bynkershoek uses the point of retaken prizes to discuss restitution law in the 17th century.
If you enter “retaken prize” into Google™, you’ll generally get about three references per page and if you enter “recaptured prize” you’ll get about seven or eight references per page to individual ship actions in which a prize is retaken by a ship from the original country.
Without checking Tom’s cites, I’d be willing to bet that the majority of those “retaken” prizes were as a result of a general fleet action, not a lone raider.
In the British Navy at the time in question, the death penalty could be awarded only by a Court Martial which had to include several officers of Post rank. The Captain alone could not (legally) do this, and certainly not “at will”.
Actually, the book he was citing was Mr. Midshipman Hornblower Spoilers for that book follow:
[SPOILER]The first prize ship wasn’t recaptured though, it sank due to prior damage incured when it was originally captured. The crew of the prize ship didn’t mutiny until they were in the lifeboat, which was captured by a French privateer, which was in turn captured by the ship Hornblower had originally started out on (unlikely chain of events, but very entertaining reading)
And Hornblower’s run-in with the coast guard types, IIRC, was right after they had gone ashore in French territory to get fresh water, due to some miscalculation in their provisioning in relation to the thirst of cows in Mediteranean heat.[/SPOILER]
As for the captured ships in Lieutenant Hornblower, they didn’t have prisoner rebelions. Spoilers for this book too:
The rebelion in question was caused by Spanish soldiers being held prisoner on the HMS Retribution. Hornblower sabotaged two of the captured ships (to prevent their crews from sailing off with them) then gathered the prize crews on the third to retake the Retribution when he realized she was being taken by the Spanish.
And as for Hornblower and the Crisis:
They captured a French ship, but lacked the men to attempt to secure the ship belowdecks. Someone down there got the bright idea to start firing muskets up through the floorboards at the British sailors, so the British sabotaged the rigging and rowed like hell back to their ship.
An interesting addition to the recapturing of a prize thing. In one of the Aubrey-Maturin books, Mauritius Command I think, they recapture a formerly British ship, taken by the French just less than a day earlier. Although they have the smaller ship at their mercy (already surrendered), they waste a few hours clumsily getting toward it so that they don’t take possession less than 24 hours after its original capture.
If it were retaken within 24 hours, it wouldn’t have been a prize and the retaking ship would get no prize money (it might be classified as salvage or something). Just wait a while, and there’s a big bonus for recapturing it. Sneaky.
Young Midshipman Hornbower was put about a captured French merchantman with a load of rice. He did not know the sip was holed and the rice was absorbing the sea water. He then was transfered to a French raider, where he started a fire in the paint locker to allow her capture by his own ship.
In the Med, Lt Hornblower was sent ashore to transport cattle back to the fleet. But the port was quarantined by a case of The Awfuls. He took his boat crew and loaded the cattle onto a provison ship which they attempted to sail. At one point (while collecting water) they were challenged by a Coast Guard who were surprised by the sudden and well-led attack. As a result Hornblower arrived in Gibraltar with the provision ship, and a prize.
Just in time for the meeting of the ill-fated Captain’s Board which of course was disrupted by the arrival of Spanish fireships.
Beg to differ with you Raguleader, but since Paul in Saudi specifically says that the ship was rebelling in the English Channel, it’s clearly Hornblower During the Crisis he’s recalling.
And I don’t know how yuou could first say that Lieutenant Hornblower didn’t have prisoner rebellions and then say in your spoiler box that the prisoners rebelled.