Function of Capture at Sea

First, then, we have to consider the employment of blockade measures for purposes other than those formerly intended. Here primary importance attaches to the fact that seizures or captures may be said to have been ends in themselves. To some extent this appears even in the relative importance of the paper blockade as compared with the effective blockade; for the former gave much greater chances of capture but, at the same time, was a far less safe means of preventing intercourse with the enemy. Moreover, two of the most important methods of blockade are largely explained when we come to consider the importance of captures—namely, the arbitrary extension of the idea of contraband and the persistent refusal of Great Britain to acknowledge the proposition that 'free ships make free goods' or that 'the flag covers the cargo', which implies that enemy goods are immune from capture on neutral vessels.

The object of this encouragement of captures for their own sake was scarcely in any notable number of cases what one would nowadays be most inclined to expect, that is, the procurement of goods for one's own use in this convenient manner. It is true that Pitt, according to a statement of the then Swedish envoy in London, Lars von Engeström—a statement, however, which is not confirmed by the brief parliamentary reports—referred in the House of Commons on November 3, 1795, to seizures of corn cargoes bound for French ports as a means of overcoming the exceptional shortage of foodstuffs in England; and there is also a later utterance of Napoleon to the same effect. But these cases would seem to be almost unique, as one might expect beforehand in view of the fact that the object of the seizures was not, as a rule, to acquire goods, but rather to dispose of them. An explanation must be found elsewhere, namely, in the fact that captures were a means of encouragement to the captors themselves; and to this point there was ascribed the greatest importance. To begin with, it applied to the great horde of privateers, who were regarded as forming a very important augmentation to the fighting forces of the country, but who manifestly could not embark on that career except with some prospect of profit. In a highly characteristic manner a well-known English international jurist, William Manning, towards the middle of the nineteenth century explained the benefit of these privateers on laissez-faire lines. 'They increase the naval force of a state,' he said, 'by causing vessels to be equipped from private cupidity, which a minister might not be able to obtain by general taxation without much difficulty'.