[8] Phillimore, op. cit. iii, 638.
[9] 27 and 28 Vict., c 25, s 40, 1864.
[PART 5. PRIZE MONEY.]
Whenever a vessel or cargo is adjudged good prize by the court it is publicly sold and the proceeds are decreed to the captors as prize money, unless they are non-commissioned or forfeit it by failure to observe the regulations imposed upon them for the conduct and safe keeping of the prize.[1] In England the proceeds of all vessels and cargoes, whether of a purely mercantile or of a military character are divided as prize money, though the government reserves the right of preemption on naval and victualling stores.[2] The rules which govern the prize court in adjudging a captured vessel good prize or not are beyond the scope of this paper. In general all enemy vessels are condemned, and neutral vessels are condemned for breach of blockade, carriage of contraband or unneutral service. These matters are at present largely covered by the Hague conventions of 1907 and the Declaration of London of 1909.[3] However as previously noted the crown reserves the right to free any vessel even though its capture was perfectly legal and it was of a class that would ordinarily be adjudged good prize.[4]
In the distribution of prize money there must be decided, first, what vessels are to share in the prize; second, what proportion each vessel is to get, and third, what proportion of the vessels share each officer and man on board is to receive.
The second and third points are settled by the prize proclamation which decrees division among the officers and men of all the vessels sharing according to the grade they occupy. There is no division among the vessels but all men entitled to share are grouped together in eleven grades, each one of which receives a fixed proportion of the prize money. This portion is then divided equally among all the men of that grade, no matter on what vessel they served. Thus a sailor on a vessel constructively assisting receives exactly the same share as a sailor of the same grade on the vessel making the actual capture.[5]
Where some of the vessels are allies the division is usually regulated by treaty. The provisions of Great Britain's treaties with France of 1854 and 1860 have already been noted.[6] In these cases division was to be made between the vessels of the allies according to the number of men on board irrespective of rank. Of course, for the share decreed to her own vessels, England employed her own rules of division. Where there is no treaty or some of the vessels are privateers the division among the vessels is decreed by the court, an effort being made to apportion it according to the relative strength of the vessels. To determine this the number of men, guns or both on the various vessels are considered. Thus Mansfield said,
"The law of nations does not determine but if one might guess at it, it must be in the ratio of the strength of the respective captors, to know which the number of guns, weight of metal, number of men and strength of each fleet must be stated."[7]