To accelerate the process of destroying the enemy's trade, a number of blank letters of marque, ministerially signed and stamped with the royal seal, were sent out to the Prussian Minister in London, and he somewhat imprudently lent a couple of these to an interesting adventurer, named Erskine Douglas, who said that he wished to show them to shipowners with whom he was in treaty for the equipment of privateers. Douglas claimed to be a relative of the Prussian Field-Marshal Keith, who was of Scottish origin, and he brought letters of introduction from well-known members of the English nobility, so the Minister may perhaps be excused for entrusting the documents to him. But his confidence was gravely abused, for Douglas, having come to an agreement with the firm of Dunbar and Eyre, filled in the forms on his own responsibility, and two privateers were sent out with these fraudulent credentials.
Shortly afterwards, one of these ships, the Lissa, put into Emden with a rich Swedish prize. Lying in the harbour was an English man-of-war, and the captain of this ship, declaring that the English sailors on board the Lissa were all either deserters or men who had bound themselves to serve in the British Navy, required that they should be given up to him. As compliance was refused, he went on board the Lissa with an armed escort, and, disregarding all the protests of its captain, took away with him twenty-six members of the crew. This action was regarded by Frederick as an infraction of Prussian rights of sovereignty, and representations to that effect were made in London before it was discovered in how irregular a manner the Lissa had become possessed of her papers. The matter was then discreetly allowed to drop. The Swedes, for their part, contested the legality of the capture, but the Prussian Government ruled that the letter of marque was valid, although it had not actually been issued by royal authority. At the same time Prussia advanced the strange view that, in the event of the owners of the Lissa having had cognizance of the deception which had been practised, King Frederick was entitled to the whole value of the prize. Instructions were, however, given that the Lissa should be deprived of her charter, but before they could be executed she had sailed for England.
Another of Douglas's privateersmen, the Prince Ferdinand, under a Captain Merryfield, had betaken herself to the Mediterranean, where, in a nine-months' cruise, she captured thirteen prizes, but caused so much confusion that the King thought it wiser to put a stop to the whole undertaking. The immediate ground for this step was the complaints of the Ottoman Government, with which Frederick was negotiating with a view to obtaining its support in the prosecution of the war. The appropriation of a couple of female negro slaves belonging to a pasha, who were on board one of the ships captured by Merryfield, seems to have had at least as much weight in the Turkish grievance as the more substantial losses of the merchants of Salonika. As Prussia had no territory and very little diplomatic representation on the shores of the Mediterranean, Merryfield was obliged to take his prizes into neutral harbours and place them in the custody of the English Consuls. They were the subjects of endless law suits, tedious international wrangling, and practically no profits. Merryfield's wild career was terminated by a charge of secretly selling neutral goods from one of his prizes to his own advantage. At the instance of the Prussian Government he was flung into gaol at Malta. He remained in prison five years, and even at the end of that term would not have regained his liberty if the Grand Master of the Maltese Knights had not refused to pay for his maintenance any longer.
Hardly less chequered were the fortunes of Captain Wake, the only regularly accredited Prussian privateer of whom anything is known. The operations of his ship, the Embden, in the Mediterranean also resulted in ceaseless bickerings, and he was delayed in Cagliari for two years by disputes of one sort or another. At last, growing weary, he set off to Berlin to prosecute his claims to a Swedish ship which he had seized, but of which the authorities at Cagliari would not permit him to dispose. Four and a half years after the capture, she was adjudged his good prize; but before he could enter into possession of her she was sunk at her moorings by a violent storm.
The total gain of the Prussian Government from the activity of these three privateers was quite negligible; while, on the other hand, the trouble and annoyance caused by them was immeasurable. The anticipations that the seas would be swept of Austrian and Swedish commerce by a swarm of vessels under the Prussian flag proved to have been quite illusory, and it was a particular disappointment to Frederick that the German shipowners looked askance at the whole business, and in no single instance applied for letters of marque.
A noteworthy feature of the episode is that Frederick's Government, reversing the practice of the Hansa, laid down for its privateers the rule that a neutral flag covered the enemy's goods, and that neutral goods were safe from capture even when under the enemy's flag. This, it is maintained, has ever since been Prussian tradition.
A final word is due to the "Société de Commerce Maritime"—now under the name "Seehandlung," the State bank of the Kingdom of Prussia—which was established by Frederick the Great in 1772, "to carry on shipping under the Prussian flag, and trade with the ports of Spain and all other places where reasonable and certain prospects of substantial profits from imports and exports are to be found." It was vessels of this corporation which, towards the close of the first half of the nineteenth century, bore a German flag for the first time round the world, and its foundation shows that the Great Elector's ideas were only dormant and not dead.
Frederick's immediate purpose was to open up the markets of South America to Silesian linen, but, in consequence of the rigid protectionist policy of Spain, it was only possible to do this by transhipment at Spanish ports. The original capital of the company was 1,200,000 thalers, in shares of 500 thalers each, and of these 2,100 were the property of the King. The Société was granted the exclusive right of trading in English, French, and Spanish salt, and in Polish wax, and was also endowed with many other privileges. It did not at first prove a very profitable venture, and its early days were also clouded over by the defalcations of one of its managers. In course of time it became little more than a branch of the Royal Treasury and the negotiator of State loans, but in the thirties of last century it passed under the control of a man who determined to restore to it something of its original character, and laid out a considerable capital in English-built ships. At that period German merchantmen seldom ventured beyond Bordeaux and Lisbon; but the vessels of the Seehandlung repeatedly encircled the globe, showed their flag in the remotest harbours of Orient and Occident, and established directly that export to South America of the wares of the Riesengebirge which Frederick the Great had in his mind when he called the company into existence.
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