<< IS AND REMAINS ABOLISHED.” PRIVATEERS VERSUS VOLUNTEER FLEETS. IT has been remarked as a matter of common observation that whenever a treasonable association or an improper periodical is suppressed by the indignation of the booksellers or the apprehensions of Government, it promptly reappears under a new name. It is and remains abolished, to quote the now familiar phrase which heads these lines, under its former title, and calmly continues to sin under the new one. It might have been added that, like the snake the snake when trodden on or the politician returned to power after a period of enforced leisure, it is usually twice as vicious as before. In both respects only too close a parallel is afforded by the case to which this article refers the nominal suppression of privateering; its real revival in & more dangerous and more un restricted form. The privateersman has had but scant justice dealt to him. Far removed from perfection by the nature of his calling, he yet never deserved the obloquy which was heaped upon him. On the one hand, the Englishman at all events, bound by the strictest legal regulations, has suffered for the evil deeds career of au of his foreign namesake and rival, who was practically unfettered in his plunder; on the other hand, professional jealousy and excitable humanitarianism have combined to lay to his charge things which he knew not. Contemporary American thors and statesmen were righteously indignant at the rank piracy of the so-called "patriot" cruisers which, nominally commissioned by the revolted colonies of South America, turned the Spanish Main in the 'Twenties into a nest of sea-robbers; but their heated utterances 1 should not be quoted as evidence. And when to other charges is added that of cowardice, the cold facts of history come to the help of the privateers. "They neither," said a journal of authority not twenty years ago, "defend their country nor fight its armed foes, unless reluctantly compelled to do so." The privateers, it is alleged, ran from armed craft, however inferior, and preyed almost exclusively on unarmed vessels. The latter was their purpose-their raison d'être; but with regard to the first part of the allegations our naval annals prove that the privateersman fought with a 1 A fine example of such rhetoric is in the North American Review' for July 1820. "It" (privateering) can make its way through blood to the treasure it gloats upon, lure by false smiles to destruction, advance securely to its object under the guise of friendship, ensnare by treachery, deceive by perfidy, and secure its unrighteous gains by shameless perjury." desperation and a savage determination to conquer or die which the professional combatant rarely showed. The nearest parallel to it in modern times would be the fury of the American seamen during the Cuban war after the alleged treacherous destruction of the Maine. As to the charge of want of patriotism, it is sufficient to quote Professor Laughton's sketches of two typical eighteenth-century privateers,1 to show what stuff such men were at times made of. effrontery to claim a patron saint - rendered the Scandinavian seas unsafe for half a century. The Hansa in consequence set its face against letters of marque, and very few were granted for some centuries. Their next important appearance in English history is in the Civil War, when King and Parliament issued them against each other, no one apparently being much the worse. On the Continent the privateer or pirate had long been an institution: the "Gueux de Mer," commissioned by William of Orange, furnish an instance of an authorised force of such a kind. But in this country the regular profession may be said to have first been established with the reduction to order of the fleet under the Commonwealth and Charles II. Henceforward the king's ship was sharply distinguished from the privateer, a distinction by no means easy to detect in all cases in the days of Drake and Hawkins. Pepys tells us of at least one spirited encounter between a vessel of the Royal Navy and Dutch privateers, who certainly did not "run from armed craft, however inferior." Indeed not many years after a man-of-war of 46 guns was actually captured in Yarmouth Roads, within sight of shore, by a swarm of French privateers. Privateers were distinguished from king's ships by bearing as their commission "letters of marque 2 and reprisal," first granted by Edward I. In their inception such letters were really leave to retaliate for wrong suffered from a Power nominally at peace with us-in this instance Portugal. But the licensing of private marauders was much discredited by certain happenings about a century later. Two Hanse towns in Mecklenburg, desirous to relieve their prince, who was besieged in Stockholm, issued letters of marque ("Thieves' letters" they were bluntly termed by the victims) to all the rascals of the Baltic, authorising them to "victual" the beleaguered city. They relieved the besieged easily enough, and then formed themselves into a confederacy of robbers, which under the name of the "Victualling But at this time we can Brothers" or "St Vitalius's already detect the germs of the Brothers "—for they had the unpopularity which afterwards 1 Fraser's Magazine,' vol. 104, pp. 462, 509. 2 Marque, marquer, is either the Low Latin word marcare, to devastate (primarily to lay waste the mark or marches of a neighbour), or simply to "mark" and so appropriate goods. attached to this pursuit. Clarendon in his Life bitterly laments the advantages possessed by the private marauder. "In the king's fleet," he says, "they might gain well, but they were sure of blows: nothing could be got there without fighting. They took all who could make little resistance, and fled from all who were too strong for them. And so these fellows were always well manned, when the king's ships were compelled to stay many days for want of men, who were raised by pressing and with great difficulty." He might have added that the men thus obtained were the scum of the seaport towns, while the pick of British mariners sought employment more profitable and not exposed to the savage discipline of the Royal Navy. Any good seaman who respected himself and desired to put by a few broad pieces for wife and child was likely to be found on the privateer's decks, on which, however, he was liable to impressment as much as on shore, unless he was exactly accounted for by the ship's certificate. That he fought shy of the king's ships was not always due to a guilty conscience. But the golden times of the privateers were those of the Spanish Succession wars. Jamaica was a perfect nest of them, preying on the West Indian commerce, then the richest in the world; while in England so universal was the rush for the privilege of plundering that letters of marque were sold like soup - tickets. The proprietor of the first British newspaper announced in 1703 that besides dealing in old ropes and paper he was ready to sell Welsh prayerbooks, Bridgwater peas, paperhangings, blank ale - licences, and "blank commissions for private men-of-war." Of course many of these were of the one-gun type, which was not without its usefulness. In the somewhat famous case of the fishing vessel from Poole, which in 1695, with a crew of two men and a boy, captured and brought in a privateer manned by sixteen Frenchmen, it is pretty certain that the little ship carried a gun; and if the writer's information from tradition be correct, it was the custom down to a late date for most fishing vessels, however small, on the East Coast at least, to do so. The "billyboy" or the smack would have either a carronade1 on a slide before the mast or a couple of swivels. In time of peace they would be used for signals of distress; in time of war-well, who knows what may happen? These little oraft were not privateers by any means, but they were the vessels that rendered useless the blocking of the German ports by the decrees of Napoleon. They were on occasion smugglers, and on occasion they would 1 This universal custom accounts for the great number of small cannon which were used after the peace as street posts (at the corners of the "Rows >> especially) at Yarmouth and elsewhere. more fight. The one-gun armament seems trifling; but, as we shall see, it has been found useful in much later times. To return to the real privateer. After the Peace of Utrecht his occupation was legally at an end; but its attractions were too strong to be abandoned easily, and he frequently degenerated into pirate pure and simple. The Jamaican1 privateers had always been on a looser footing than those of the mother country-the prize courts there being not quite so strict, and apt to be swayed by local partiality. But even there the privateer was not always favoured. The West Indies were even in time of peace the scene of constant conflict between Briton and Spaniard, and probably Henry Jennings thought he was within his rights as an English subject when in 1716 he found the Spaniards dredging up millions from a wreck in the Gulf of Florida and seized the money. But he was warned that if he returned to Jamaica the courts would deprive him of his gains; whereupon he incontinently turned pirate, and founded at Providence Island a settlement of marauders which became the nucleus of a pirate navy-for it was no less-destined to be the terror of the Atlantic for a score of years. With the increase of privateering came the need for its regulation; and, beginning with an Act of 1744, we find the rules laid down by Parliament becoming ever stricter and stricter. By the Act referred to the payment of onetenth of the value of a prize to the Lord High Admiral was abolished; but in every other respect it restricted and mulcted the privateers for whose encouragement it was supposed to be passed. The perfection of privateering law appears to have been reached by a statute of 1805. Its strictness is amazing. The days when blank alehouse licences and letters of marque were for sale side by side at the marine-store dealers' were past and gone. Licences to carry on war against France and Spain now cost £42. Before an armed vessel could leave port her build, her tonnage, and her armament had to be certified and registered; accuracy was proved the penalty was £1000. Bail or security to a large amount had to be given by the owner or other responsible person. When the ship was afloat she was liable to be boarded and her letters of marque demanded by the captain of any neutral manof-war; and lastly, her crew were under the King's Regulations and amenable to full naval discipline, administered by court-martial as in the case of the regular bluejacket. These two latter provisions strikingly display the disadvantageous position of the privateer as compared with the "volunteer fleets" of modern times. To these latter there is some and if in 1 The Jamaicans were in the position of the Duke of Parma-" their geography made it impossible for them to be honest men." distant resemblance to be found in the private vessels hired by the Commissioners of Excise and Customs: they were chiefly employed in putting putting down smuggling, but they were also authorised to take foreign prizes; but, smuggler or Frenchman, their prize had to be handed over intact to their employers, who divided the proceeds with them. Even the ordinary privateer was forbidden under the heaviest penalties to break bulk or appropriate the goods of passengers until the prize court had had its say. And the prize courts were not always kind. Worst of all the privateer's disadvantages was the genuine unpopularity with which he had to contend. The extraordinarily minute1 orders as to behaviour towards prisoners which were given him by his owners show their dread of criticism. This dislike showed itself openly. The corporation of Edinburgh forbade the sale of prize-goods within its boundaries; and a bill authorising such sales at Liverpool was opposed in Parliament and nearly thrown out. This unpopularity was due to more causes than one. In the first place, there was the natural professional jealousy of the regular officer for the amateur which, as recent history has shown us, is, in land warfare at least, not yet extinct. This was heightened by the consideration of prize-money-an invidious matter enough, and one which besmirched the fame of England's greatest naval heroes. Not only were quarrels between officers fostered by jealousy on this subject, as between Nelson and Sir John Orde, and even Nelson and Saint Vincent, but the most unheroic action was imputed to commanders. The glorious 1st of June might, it was said, have been more glorious if Howe had not neglected pursuit in care for his prizes. Yet the prizemoney in the Royal Navy was absurdly small and ill-distributed. Tradition tells us of the fortunate seamen who ate bank-notes between bread-andbutter and rolled in guineas on the floor of hackney coaches: if any did so, they were privateersmen. If the prizes, the loss of which was so bitterly lamented after the Nile, had been all secured, the share of a captain would have been £1000, that of a lieutenant £75, and that of a seaman £2, 4s. 1d. No wonder the king's men were filled with envy and all uncharitableness when when they heard how the privateers of Liverpool had in ten months netted £1,025,600 of lawful prize. To this professional jealousy was added the horror roused among civilians by tales of outrage, which, so far as regards the French privateers, were not unfounded. The ghastly scene in the cabin of the captured Indiaman described in 'Tom Cringle's Log' was not altogether conjured up by the author's fancy. But 1 Gomer Williams, 'The Privateers of Liverpool,' p. 21 sqq., gives in full the instructions issued to Captain Haslam of the Enterprise privateer in 1779. |