First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [68]
Prize money to be divided among officers and crew was a motor power for navies as important as wind, and simple booty rather than strategic purpose was a more immediate object of the sea battles in the War of Jenkins’ Ear, as it was in most combats of the time. Without a clearly conceived strategic aim for dominance of the sea-lanes or land base for control of the Colonies, battle was engaged mainly for the money it would pay to the captains, who took their share in prize money, and to the state, which took a voracious bite out of the opponent’s commerce. In the spectacular convoy battle off Cape Finisterre, Spain, in May, 1747, against the French East India trade, the English under Admiral Anson, annihilating the French escort, took six French warships and, out of the convoy’s 40 ships, five armed East Indiamen and six or seven other merchantmen. The remainder escaped to Canada. Even so, the English haul included about £300,000 in treasure and stores, in addition to the captured ships. In a heroic defense by the French, the small 40-gun Gloire fought on until nightfall against three English ships of the line, until its captain was decapitated by a cannonball, 75 of the crew lay dead on the deck, masts and sails were in ruins, ammunition was reduced to the last cartridge and the hold was filling with water before the flag was struck in surrender. The obdurate refusal to yield may have owed something to the presence of an ensign of the Gloire, the twenty-five-year-old François de Grasse, a provincial nobleman known ever since he was a cadet for his energy and force. When the Gloire was captured, he was taken prisoner and held at Winchester in England for three months. Money and goods were loaded into twenty wagons at Portsmouth to be paraded through the streets to the cheers of the populace before the proceeds were deposited in the Bank of England. In a second encounter in June off Brest (often confused with Cape Finisterre because it lies in the department of the French Finistère), against a large French convoy bringing home the rich West Indian trade, an English squadron, including Rodney in the Eagle, captured 48 prizes loaded with valuable cargo. Although more than that number of French merchantmen escaped, Rodney and his fellow commanders gained a wealth of prize money. In the Seven Years’ War, 1756–63, the central conflict of the era, from which the English emerged sovereign of the seas, they took in the single year 1755, before even a formal declaration of war, 300 French merchantmen for an estimated total of $6 million.
Individual admirals and captains made their fortunes from their share of prize money, which was divided according to prize law of an extreme complexity that testified to its importance in the system. Ships’ captains of a victorious squadron divided ⅜ of the total value of captured ships and cargoes, depending on whether the squadron was under the orders of an admiral, with ⅛ reserved for a captain who was a flag officer if one was on board. Lieutenants, captains of marines, warrant officers, chaplains and lesser officers divided ⅛. Another ⅛ went to midshipmen and sailmakers, and the remaining 2/8, or 25 percent, to seamen, cooks and stewards. Prize law allowed an intricate adjustment based on size and armament to equalize the share of larger and smaller ships, on the theory that the stronger ships did most of the shooting and had more numerous crews. The adjusted rate was worked out by applying to each ship a factor calculated by multiplying