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there five days in obtaining plunged us at once into heat replies to the strenuous string and drought nearly up to of questions to which it was Persian Gulf standards. As I my task to find the answers. lay in my earriage gasping for The old Sphinx rolled cease- air, parched with thirst, the lessly and abominably day and train drew up at the platform night on the Monsoon swell of some unimaginable place of which swept in and round the habitation in the wilderness, bay; but apart from that, and and there came in at my apart from its almost entire closely-shuttered window-for barrenness and lack of water, I had a whole carriage to the place certainly had possi- myself-a voice which said: bilities. In the pursuit of "Would you like some iced angles and heights, I climbed grapes?" I imagined at first, the hills that lie beyond the in some dismay, that this was plain on which the little town only "light-headedness," and stands; and I have often won- the premonition of a heatdered since if any True Believer stroke; but it turned out to be came across and cursed my a real offer, which almost imheel-marks in the sand. India- mediately materialised. If Mr rubber heels were compara- Bell, of the Indian Police, and tively new in those days, and his sister have forgotten that mine were screwed on with a kind act, and how they shared metal arrangement which left the contents of their ice-box a clearly marked impression of (without which no sane Indian Geneva cross behind it, travels by train in the height easily to be construed by an of the summer) with an unimaginative native into a sign known griffin wayfarer, who of the times! We left Chah- had no such equipment, they bar, our work completed, pro- may now know that it has foundly sympathising with the ever been remembered by a staff of the Indian Telegraph ceaselessly grateful recipient! Station there marooned in the desert, in tantalising touch with the news and the affairs of the great world, and, like lighthousekeepers on some isolated rook, in sight of its passing ships, but condemned to stand outside it, a lonely link in the chain of Eastern Empire.

Three days later I was packed up, and steaming away into the night, by the 10.30 P.M. train from Karachi to Bombay. The line goes across a great stretch of desert, and

VOL. CCVII.—NO. MCCLVII.

I sailed from Bombay in the good ship Arabia, and got home at the end of July, cool once more, and happy, bringing my sheaves with mesheaves, in this case, of reports and charts, which included, I may humbly believe, discoveries of a useful character. The Admiralty letter of thanks, which in due course they evoked, made a stimulating glow in that dark corner where each one keeps, or should keep, a critical estimation of his own deeds.

G

THE KING'S PRIZE MONEY.

BY GILBERT SINGLETON-GATES.

CALL it what you will, prize bounty, prize award, prize fund, it is all the same thing -the King's prize moneyearned by his seamen and marines in time of war.

After hundreds of years it is still regarded as the rightful reward for the Admiral of the Fleet and the ship's boy. Surely none can begrudge this extra remuneration to the men who spent the fulness of their years on the grey seas, who went down to the deep waters in queer ramshackle ships, seeking the unseen, who endured and fought and gained great victories.

Thus shall it remain as an encouragement to zeal and gallantry and enterprisethough in actual reality, prize money has had its day and its glories have departed for

ever.

No longer can an indomitable Admiral, impoverished by oiroumstances, despatch his frigates in war-time to pick up a few prizes to fill his purse. No longer can an Anson wait for a treasure - ship worth a million and a half. No longer do seamen "fry" silver watches over the galley fires in an effort to expend their suddenly acquired riches.

Possibilities of huge hauls of treasure at sea did not exist in the late war. The largest seizures of ships took place at the inception, and our

com

mand of the waters was such that few enemy merchant ships ever ventured into the highways of ocean.

As Mr Laird Clowes once pointed out, prize money was the strongest incentive to service in the Navy during the eighteenth century. The one side of the gamble was this ohanee of wealth. The other side appears in the statistics of the Seven Years' Campaign against Spain. Of 184,893 seamen and marines employed, only 1512 were killed; but 133,708 died of disease and were missing- deserters in many cases, owing to the wretched conditions of naval life. We have no such gamble to-day.

Early in 1914 the Admiralty abolished prize money, holding that "the private enrichment of individuals by acts arising out of warfare is not compatible with the highest conception of the military or naval profession." The proceeds of the sale of captured enemy ships were to be used instead for a system of bounties in which the whole of the Navy, in place of a limited number of fortunate orews, might share. Thus arose the Naval Prize Fund.

By the Order in Council in 1915, His Majesty declared his intention to grant bounty (by virtue of the Naval Prize Aot of 1864) to the officers and orews of such of his ships of

war as were actually present ships, besides having the at the destroying or taking stimulus of constant exertion of any armed ship of any of and excitement, reaped a rich His Majesty's enemies. Such harvest, while the main fleet officers and crews were en blockading the enemy's ports, titled to have distributed denied the zest of action but among them as prize bounty, faithful to duty for long "a sum calculated at the rate months together in all of £5 for each person on board weathers, received nothing. the enemy ship at the begin- Yet the blockading fleet, like ning of the the engagement." the Grand Fleet, was the Such constituted Naval shield behind which the capBounties as distinguished ture of enemy's commerce from the Prize Fand.

There was also a further reward, prize salvage, arising from occurrences such as came before Sir Samuel Evans in March 1916.

The Pontoporos, although a Greek vessel, was carrying coal from British merchants at Calcutta to British merohants at Karachi when the Emden captured and comand commandeered her cargo. Then the British light oruiser H.M.S. Yarmouth appeared, and found the Pontoporos in company with the Markomannia, a supply - ship to the Emden. The Markomannia was sunk and the Greek vessel released, and the law action was a claim by Captain H. L. Cochrane and the orew of of H.M.S. Farmouth that they saved the latter from certain destruction, and were thus entitled to remuneration for prize salvage and recapture.

These proposed changes were cordially welcomed in the Navy. The new plan meant that all would share in the harvest reaped by a few. Under the old and now obsolete system, the vessels engaged in capturing enemy

was made possible.

But the Admiralty declared they were unable to make any distributions until after the close of hostilities, with the result that not one, but many officers and men advertised publicly their willingness to accept cash offers for their post-war prospects of prize money. Not indeed that such a withholding of prize money was an innovation. On the contrary, it seemed the general practice in the ancient days to withhold these rewards till long after the participants in the actions had died, and ofttimes their relations as well.

By appointing a Prize Claims Committee which decided whether compensation should be given to claimants whose claims are not recognised by the prize law, but would be good in equity or civil law, the Admiralty brought more of the legal element into the matter of prize law, and their expenses became added to the already large sums spent on commissions and claims and costs of sales. So the lawyers have taken their dues, until at present the Naval Prize Fund

amounts to £5,600,000, a single full share being earned by thirty months' qualifying service. The value of one such share is 50s. Upon this basis I observe a recent writer calculated that the first distribution would result in the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet receiving £2500, and the ordinary seaman or marine £7, 108.

Despite the large amount that has been allowed to the lawyers, and incidental expenses, all of which accounts the Admiralty guard most zealously, there still remains this large sum, and there is the absolute certainty of its being received by those entitled to it. This was not so in the old days, even apart from the peculations of prizemoney agents.

Nicolas observed that prize money seems to have been as ancient as the Navy itself. Originally a force developed for piratical purposes, "it is not surprising that the men of the Navy sought for loot as a reward of their prowess, and as a recompense for the scars of battle." In the reign of King John, all captures at sea were regarded as the property of His Majesty entirely, and whether any reward was paid to the captors depended on his bounty alone. It is related that in 1205 the King granted a moiety of their takings to a number of galley-men in the service of Thomas of Galway, and a few years afterwards the sum of £100 to mariners and galley-men on account of the sale of the goods of a ship

which was captured by them off the coast of Wales.

The King's purse was the real deciding factor. fortunes were at low ebb, the mariners received nothing. If the King was in funds, there was a chance of his being generous. But usually he pocketed the whole amount.

The Crown in practice, however, in the following reign, admitted the right of the captor to a share of the takinge, and in the famous Black Book of the Admiralty of Edward III. the division of prize money is expounded in the Norman - French language in which that book was written. One quarter was assured to the King's Majesty, and another quarter to the owners of the capturing ships, while the remainder went to the captors; but the Admiral and a chosen few of his officers would appear to have secured by far the greater part, for bitter dissatisfaction existed amongst the seamen and mariners, culminating in proposal emanating from an inquisition of mariners held at Queensborough in 1375, that after the deduction of the King's share, and in the absence of the Admiral, the remainder should go-one-half to the owners, and one-half to the captors; but that the master of the ship should have twice as much as any mariner. But nothing occurred to secure further consideration for the mariners' claims till, in 1596, the instructions and articles for the Cadiz fleet by Robert, Earl of Essex, and Charles,

Lord Howard, Lord High proceeds from the sale of Admiral of England, contained merchant prizes were one-third the following references to to officers and men, one-third prizes:to the widows' and orphans' fund, and one-third to the State. A further new scheme was instituted in 1653, by which ten shillings per ton of every prize was paid, besides £6, 138, 4d, for each gun carried and to £10 per gun for every man-of-war destroyed.

"XVIII. When you shall be appointed to give chase and that you shall surprise any enemy ships that shall have treasure or merchandise of value in her, you shall take great care that those commodities in her be preserved; in respect whereof, and for your loyal and faithful service to be done on this voyage, Her Majesty's favour, bounty, and pleasure is that a third part of that which shall be taken from the enemy, so it be not the King's treasure, jewels, or a carrack, shall be employed to the commodity and benefit of the whole company, over and above his ordinary wages, according to his desert." Parliament in 1642 assigned to officers and men of the capturing ships one-third of the value of the prizes taken by them; but it was the practice to make unjustifiable deductions on various pretexts, and with the delays in payment that always characterised these awards, discontent in the Navy was general. The sums were often not paid for many years.

An Act of 1649 gave the seamen half the value of a man-of-war taken, the other half going to a fund for the relief of the sick and wounded, widows and orphans. Men-ofwar were paid for at the value of £12 to £20 per gun. The

Three millions sterling was the extent of the booty at the capture of Havana in 1762 by our combined naval and military forces. What happened to it is best told by the historian Howitt, who says:

"The same dishonourable conduct in the distribution of prize money, which has too often disgraced our service, was most flagrant here and incited the loudest murmurs. The Admiral and General pocketed each £122,697; the sea captains £1600 each; and the field officers only £564; the land captains £184 each (not 80 mueh 88 a naval lieutenant, who had each £234), whilst the poor sailors had nearly £3, 14s. 9d. each, and the poor soldiers, who had borne the brunt of the heat, the labour, and the fighting, received the paltry sum of £4, 18. Sd. each. What had been the nature of the service to these poor fellows may be known from the fact that eleven hundred of them were killed by the climate and the enemy, and of the remaining army, at least 10,000 men, not more than 2500 were capable of service. By this conquest the passage of the

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