Military Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

But, even granted that a prize-court gave its verdicts with the strictest regard to the evidence, of what nature was that evidence likely to be when it came chiefly from the purser on board the privateer, whose duty it was to draw up a verbal process of the circumstances of every visit or capture, and who, as he was paid and nominated by the captain of the privateer, was dependent for his profits in the concern on the lawfulness of the prizes? How easy to represent that a defenceless merchant vessel had offered resistance to search, and that therefore by the law of nations she and her cargo were lawful prize! How tempting to falsify every circumstance that really attended the capture, or that legally affected the captors’ rights to their plunder!

These aspects of privateering soon led unbiassed minds to a sounder judgment about it than was discernible in received opinion. Molloy, an English writer, spoke of it, as long ago as 1769, as follows: ‘It were well they (the privateers) were restrained by consent of all princes, since all good men account them but one remove from pirates, who without any respect to the cause, or having any injury done them, or so much as hired for the service, spoil men and goods, making even a trade and calling of it.’[82] Martens, the German publicist, at the end of the same century, called privateering a privileged piracy; but Nelson’s opinion may fairly count for more than all; and of his opinion there remains no doubt whatever. In a letter dated August 7, 1804, he wrote: ‘If I had the least authority in controlling the privateers, whose conduct is so disgraceful to the British nation, I would instantly take their commissions from them.’ In the same letter he spoke of them as a horde of sanctioned robbers;[83] and on another occasion he wrote: ‘The conduct of all privateering is, as far as I have seen, so near piracy, that I only wonder any civilised nation can allow them. The lawful as well as the unlawful commerce of the neutral flag is subject to every violation and spoliation.’[84] Yet it was for the sake of such spoliation, which England chose to regard as her maritime right and to identify with her maritime supremacy, that, under the pretext of solicitude for the liberties of Europe, she fought her long war with France, and made herself the enemy in turn of nearly every other civilised Power in the world.

The Declaration of Paris, the first article of which abolished privateering between the signatory Powers, was signed by Lord Clarendon on behalf of England; but on the ground that it was not formally a treaty, never having been ratified by Parliament or the Crown, it has actually been several times proposed in the English Parliament to violate the honour of England by declaring that agreement null and void.[85] Lord Derby, in reference to such proposals, said in 1867: ‘We have given a pledge, not merely to the Powers who signed with us, but to the whole civilised world.’ This was the language of real patriotism, which esteems a country’s honour its highest interest; the other was the language of the plainest perfidy. In November 1876, the Russian Government was also strongly urged, in the case of war with England, to issue letters of marque against British commerce, in spite of the international agreement to the contrary.[86] It is not likely that it would have done so; but these motions in different countries give vital interest to the history of privateering as one of the legitimate modes of waging war.

Moreover, since neither Spain, the United States, nor Mexico signed the Declaration of Paris, war with any of them would revive all the atrocities and disputes that have embittered previous wars in which England has been engaged. The precedent of former treaties, such as that between Sweden and the United Provinces in 1675, the United States and Prussia in 1785, and the United States and Italy in 1871, by which either party agreed in the event of war not to employ privateers against the other, affords an obvious sample of what diplomacy might yet do to diminish the chances of war between the signatory and the non-signatory Powers.

The United States would have signed the Declaration of Paris if it had exempted the merchant vessels of belligerents as well from public armed vessels as from privateers: and this must be looked to as the next conquest of law over lawlessness. Russia and several other Powers were ready to accept the American amendment, which, having at first only fallen through owing to the opposition of England, was subsequently withdrawn by America herself. Nevertheless, that amendment remains the wish not only of the civilised world, but of our own merchants, whose carrying trade, the largest in the world, is, in the event of England becoming a belligerent, in danger of falling into the hands of neutral countries. In 1858 the merchants of Bremen drew up a formal protest against the right of ships of war to seize the property and ships of merchants.[87] In the war of 1866 Prussia, Italy, and Austria agreed to forego this time-honoured right of mutual plunder; and the Emperor of Germany endeavoured to establish the same limitation in the war of 1870. The old maxim of war, of which the custom is a survival, has long since been disproved by political economy—the doctrine, namely, that a loss to one country is a gain to another, or that one country profits by the exact extent of the injury that it effects against the property of its adversary. Having lost its basis in reason, it only remains to remove it from practice.

If we turn for a moment from this aspect of naval warfare to the actual conduct of hostilities at sea, the desire to obtain forcible possession of an enemy’s vessels must clearly have had a beneficial effect in rendering the loss of life less extensive than it was in battles on land. To capture a ship, it was desirable, if possible, to disable without destroying it; so that the fire of each side was more generally directed against the masts and rigging than against the hull or lower parts of the vessel. In the case of the ‘Berwick,’ an English 74-gun ship, which struck her colours to the French frigate, the ‘Alceste,’ only four sailors were wounded, and the captain, whose head was taken off by a bar-shot, was the only person slain; and ‘so small a loss was attributed to the high firing of the French, who, making sure of the ‘Berwick’s’ capture, and wanting such a ship entire in their fleet, were wise enough to do as little injury as possible to her hull.’[88] The great battle between the English and Dutch fleets off Camperdown (1795) was exceptional both for the damage inflicted by both on the hulls of their adversaries, and consequently for the heavy loss of life on either side. ‘The appearance of the British ships at the close of the action was very unlike what it generally is when the French or Spaniards have been the opponents of the former. Not a single mast nor even a top-mast was shot away; nor were the rigging and sails of the ships in their usual tattered state. It was at the hulls of their adversaries that the Dutchmen had directed their shot.’[89] As the English naturally retaliated, though ‘as trophies the appearance of the Dutch prizes was gratifying,’ as ships of war ‘they were not the slightest acquisition to the navy of England.’[90]

When this happened, as it could not but often do in pitched naval battles, the Government sometimes made good to the captors the value of the prizes that the serious nature of the conflict had caused them to lose. Thus in the case of the six French prizes made at the Battle of the Nile, only three of which ever reached Plymouth, the Government, ‘in order that the captors might not suffer for the prowess they had displayed in riddling the hulls of the captured ships, paid for each of the destroyed 74s, the “Guerrier,” “Heureux,” and “Mercure,” the sum of 20,000l., which was as much as the least valuable of the remaining 74s had been valued at.’

It is curious to notice distinctions in naval warfare between lawful and unlawful methods similar to those conspicuous on land. Such projectiles as bits of iron ore, pointed stones, nails, or glass, are excluded from the list of things that may be used in good war; and the Declaration of St. Petersburg condemns explosive bullets as much on one element as on the other. Unfounded charges by one belligerent against another are, however, always liable to bring the illicit method into actual use on both sides under the pretext of reprisals; as we see in the following order of the day, issued at Brest by the French Vice-Admiral Marshal Conflans (Nov. 8, 1759): ‘It is absolutely contrary to the law of nations to make bad war, and to shoot shells at the enemy, who must always be fought according to the rules of honour, with the arms generally employed by polite nations. Yet some captains have complained that the English have used such weapons against them. It is, therefore, only on these complaints, and with an extreme reluctance, that it has been resolved to embark hollow shells on vessels of the line, but it is expressly forbidden to use them unless the enemy begin.’[91]

So the English in their turn charged the French with making bad war. The wound received by Nelson at Aboukir, on the forehead, was attributed to a piece of iron or a langridge shot.[92] And the wounds that the crew of the ‘Brunswick’ received from the ‘Vengeur’ in the famous battle between the French and English fleets in June 1794, are said to have been peculiarly distressing, owing to the French employing langridge shot of raw ore and old nails, and to their throwing stinkpots into the portholes, which caused most painful burnings and scaldings.[93] It is safest to discredit such accusations altogether, for there is no limit to the barbarities that may come into play, in consequence of too ready a credulity.