While the scattered cruisers of France were thus worrying, by a petty and inconclusive warfare, the commerce of Great Britain and its neutral carriers, the great British fleets, being left in quiet possession of the seas by the avowed purpose of the Directory to limit its efforts to the guerre de course, swept from the ocean every merchant ship wearing a hostile flag, and imposed upon the neutral trade with France the extreme limitations of maritime international law, as held by the British courts. Toward the end of the war, indeed, those principles were given an extension, which the government itself admitted was beyond anything before claimed as reconcilable with recognized law. The precise amount of the injury done, the exact number of the vessels detained, sent in, and finally condemned, in all parts of the world will perhaps never be known; it is certainly not within the power of the present writer to determine them. The frequent, though not complete, returns of British admirals give some idea of the prevailing activity, which will also appear from the occasional details that must be cited in the latter part of this chapter. Into the single port of Plymouth, in the eight years and a half ending September 29, 1801, there were sent 948 vessels of all nations; [265] of which 447 were enemy's property, 156 recaptured British, and the remainder neutrals, belonging mostly to America, Denmark, and Sweden, the three chief neutral maritime states. From Jamaica, the British commander-in-chief reports that, between March 1 and August 3, 1800,—that is, in five months,—203 vessels have been captured, detained, or destroyed.[1] This was in but one part of the West Indian Seas. The admiral at the Leeward Islands reports that in two months of the same year 62 vessels had been sent in.[1] In five months, ending September 3, 1800, Lord Keith reports from the Mediterranean 180 captures. [266] How far these instances may be accepted as a fair example of the usual results of British cruising, it is impossible to say; but it may be remarked that they all occur at a period when the war had been raging for seven years, and that captures are more numerous at the beginning than at the latter end of long hostilities. In war, as in all states of life, people learn to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to minimize risks; and even prize lists become subject to the uniformity of results observed in other statistics.
Whatever the particulars of French losses, however, they are all summed up in the unprecedented admission of the Directory, in 1799, that "not a single merchant ship is on the sea carrying the French flag." This was by no means a figure of speech, to express forcibly an extreme depression. It was the statement of a literal fact. "The former sources of our prosperity," wrote M. Arnould, Chef du Bureau du Commerce, as early as 1797, "are either lost or dried up. Our agricultural, manufacturing, and industrial power is almost extinct." And again he says, "The total number of registers issued to French ships from September, 1793, to September, 1796, amounts only to 6028." Of these, 3351 were undecked and of less than thirty tons burden. "The maritime war paralyzes our distant navigation and even diminishes considerably that on our coasts; so that a great number of French ships remain inactive, and perhaps decaying, in our ports. This remark applies principally to ships of over two hundred tons, the number of which, according to the subjoined table, [267] amounts only to 248. Before the revolution the navigation of the seas of Europe and to the French colonies employed more than 2,000 ships."
In the year ending September 20, 1800, according to a report submitted to the consuls, [268] France received directly from Asia, Africa, and America, all together, less than $300,000 worth of goods; while her exports to those three quarters of the world amounted to only $56,000. Whether these small amounts were carried in French or neutral bottoms is immaterial; the annihilation of French shipping is proved by them. The same report shows that the average size of the vessels, which, by hugging closely the coast, avoided British cruisers and maintained the water traffic between France and her neighbors, Holland, Spain, and Italy, was but thirty-six tons. Intercourse by water is always easier and, for a great bulk, quicker than by land; but in those days of wagon carriage and often poor roads it was especially so. In certain districts of France great distress for food was frequently felt in those wars, although grain abounded in other parts; because the surplus could not be distributed rapidly by land, nor freely by water. For the latter conveyance it was necessary to depend upon very small vessels, unfit for distant voyages, but which could take refuge from pursuers in the smallest port, or be readily beached; and which, if captured, would not singly be a serious loss.
Towards the end of 1795, a contemporary British authority states that over three thousand British ships had been captured, and about eight hundred French. [269] This was, however, confessedly only an estimate, and probably, so far as concerns the British losses, a large exaggeration. Ten years later a member of the House of Commons, speaking with a view rather to disparage the earlier administration, gave the British losses for the same years as 1,395. [270] Lloyd's lists give the whole number of British captured, for the years 1793-1800, both inclusive, as 4,344, of which 705 were recaptured; leaving a total loss of 3,639. [271] Assuming, what is only for this purpose admissible, that the average loss each year was nearly the same, these figures would give for the three years, 1793-1795, 1,365 as the number of captures made by hostile cruisers. In the tables appended to Norman's "Corsairs of France" the losses for the same period are given as 1,636. [272]
Finally, the number of prizes brought into French ports up to September 16, 1798, was stated by M. Arnould, in the Conseil des Anciens, as being 2,658. The table from which his figures were taken he called "an authentic list, just printed, drawn up in the office of the French Ministry of Marine, of all prizes made since the outbreak of the war." [273] It included vessels of all nationalities, during a period when France had not only been at war with several states, but had made large seizures of neutral vessels upon various pretexts. Of the entire number M. Arnould considered that not more than 2,000 were British. If we accept his estimate, only 900 British ships would have been taken in three years. It is to be observed, however, as tending to reconcile the discrepancy between this and the English accounts, that the tables used by him probably did not give, or at most gave very imperfectly, the French captures made in the East and West Indies; and, furthermore, the aggregate British losses, as given by Lloyd's lists, and by Norman's tables, include captures made by the Dutch and Spaniards as well as by the French. [274]
The British reports of their own losses are thus seen largely to exceed those made by the French. According equal confidence to the statements of Sir William Curtis, of Norman, and of Lloyd's list, we should reach an annual loss by capture of 488 British ships; which would give a total, in the twenty-one years of war, from 1793-1814, [275] of 10,248. Norman's grand total of 10,871 considerably exceeds this amount; but it will be safer, in considering a subject of so great importance as the absolute injury done, and effect produced, by war upon commerce, to accept the larger figure, or to say, in round numbers, that eleven thousand British vessels were captured by the enemy during the protracted and desperate wars caused by the French Revolution. It is the great and conspicuous instance of commerce-destroying, carried on over a long series of years, with a vigor and thoroughness never surpassed, and supported, moreover, by an unparalleled closure of the continental markets of Great Britain. The Directory first, and Napoleon afterwards, abandoned all attempts to contest the control of the sea, and threw themselves, as Louis XIV. had done before them, wholly upon a cruising war against commerce. It will be well in this day, when the same tendency so extensively prevails, to examine somewhat carefully what this accepted loss really meant, how it was felt by the British people at the time, and what expectation can reasonably be deduced from it that, by abandoning military control of the sea, and depending exclusively upon scattered cruisers, a country dependent as Great Britain is upon external commerce can be brought to terms.
Evidently, a mere statement of numbers, such as the above, without any particulars as to size, or the value of cargoes, affords but a poor indication of the absolute or relative loss sustained by British commerce. It may, however, be used as a basis, both for comparison with the actual number of vessels entering and clearing annually from British ports, and also for an estimate as to the probable tonnage captured. The annual average of capture, deduced from 11,000 ships in twenty-one years is 524. In the three years 1793-1795, the average annual number of British vessels entering and clearing from ports of Great Britain was 21,560. [276] Dividing by 524, it is found that one fortieth, or two and a half per cent of British shipping, reckoning by numbers, was taken by the enemy. In the three years 1798-1800, 1801 being the year of broken hostilities, the average annual entries and departures were 21,369,[1] which again gives two and a half as the percentage of the captures. It must be noted, also, that only the commerce of England and Scotland with foreign countries, with the colonies, with Ireland and the Channel Islands, and with British India enters into these lists of arrivals and departures. The returns of that day did not take account of British coasters, nor of the local trade of the colonies, nor again of the direct intercourse between Ireland and ports other than those of Great Britain. Yet all these contributed victims to swell the list of prizes, [277] and so to increase very materially the apparent proportion of the latter to a commerce of which the returns cited present only a fraction. Unfortunately, the amount of the coasting trade cannot now be ascertained, [278] and the consequent deduction from the calculated two and a half per cent of loss can only be conjectured.
To obtain the tonnage loss there appears to the writer no fairer means than to determine the average tonnage of the vessels entering and departing as above, at different periods of the war. In the three years 1793-1795, the average size of each ship entering or sailing from the ports of Great Britain, including the Irish trade, was 121 tons. In the year 1800 the average is 126 tons. In 1809 it has fallen again to 121, and in 1812 to 115 tons. We cannot then go far wrong in allowing 125 tons as the average size of British vessels employed in carrying on the foreign and the coasting trade of Great Britain itself during the war. [279] On this allowance the aggregate tonnage lost in the 11,000 British prizes, would be 1,375,000 in twenty-one years. In these years the aggregate British tonnage entering and leaving the ports of Great Britain, exclusive of the great neutral tonnage employed in carrying for the same trade, amounted to over 55,000,000; [280] so that the loss is again somewhat less than one fortieth, or 2½ per cent.
Another slight indication of the amount of loss, curious from its coincidence with the above deductions, is derived from the report of prize goods received into France in the year ending September, 1800, which amounted to 29,201,676 francs. At the then current value of the franc this was equivalent to £1,216,000. The real value of British exports for 1800 was £56,000,000, the prize goods again being rather less than one fortieth of the amount. The imports, however, being also nearly £56,000,000, the loss on the entire amount falls to one eightieth. It is true that many of these prize goods were probably taken in neutrals, but on the other hand the report does not take into account French capture in the colonies and East Indies; nor those made by Holland and Spain, the allies of France.