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there five days in obtaining replies to the strenuous string of questions to which it was my task to find the answers. The old Sphinx rolled ceaselessly and abominably day and night on the Monsoon swell which swept in and round the bay; but apart from that, and apart from its almost entire barrenness and lack of water, the place certainly had possibilities. In the pursuit of angles and heights, I climbed the hills that lie beyond the plain on which the little town stands; and I have often wondered since if any True Believer came across and cursed my heel-marks in the sand. Indiarubber heels were comparatively new in those days, and mine were screwed on with a metal arrangement which left a olearly marked impression of Geneva cross behind it, easily to be construed by an imaginative native into a sign of the times! We left Chahbar, our work completed, profoundly sympathising with the staff of the Indian Telegraph 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.

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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.

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plunged us at once into heat and drought nearly up to Persian Gulf standards. As I lay in my carriage gasping for air, parched with thirst, the train drew up at the platform of some unimaginable place of habitation in the wilderness, and there came in at my closely-shuttered window-for I had a whole carriage to myself-a voice which said: "Would you like some iced grapes? I imagined at first, in some dismay, that this was only "light-headedness," and the premonition of a heatstroke; but it turned out to be a real offer, which almost immediately materialised. If Mr Bell, of the Indian Police, and his sister have forgotten that kind act, and how they shared the contents of their ice-box (without which no sane Indian travels by train in the height of the summer) with an unknown griffin wayfarer, who had no such equipment, they may now know that it has ever been remembered by a ceaselessly grateful recipient!

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 oharts, 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 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 circumstances, 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 merebant 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 chance 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 crews, 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

ships, besides having the stimulus of constant exertion and excitement, reaped a rich harvest, while the main fleet blockading the enemy's ports, denied the zest of action but

war as were actually present at the destroying or taking of any armed ship of any of His Majesty's enemies. Such officers and orews were entitled to have distributed among them as prize bounty, 66 a sum calculated at the rate of £5 for each person on board the enemy ship at the beginning of the engagement." Such constituted Naval Bounties 88 distinguished ture of enemy's commerce from the Prize Fund. was made possible.

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

faithful to duty for long months together in all weathers, received nothing. Yet the blockading fleet, like the Grand Fleet, was the shield behind which the cap

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 The Pontoporos, although a officers and men advertised Greek vessel, was carrying publicly their willingness to coal from British merchants accept cash offers for their at Calcutta to British mer- post-war prospects of prize chants at Karachi when the money. Not indeed that such Emden captured and com- a withholding of prize money mandeered her cargo. Then was an innovation. On the the British light eruiser H.M.S. contrary, it seemed the geneYarmouth appeared, and found ral practice in the ancient days the Pontoporos in company company to withhold these rewards with the Markomannia, 8 till long after the participants supply - ship to the Emden. in the actions had died, and The Markomannia was sunk ofttimes their relations as and the Greek vessel released, well. and the law action was a claim by Captain H. L. Cochrane and the orew of H.M.S. Yarmouth 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

By appointing a Prize Claims Committee which deeided 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

The King's purse was the real deciding factor. If his 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.

amounts to £5,600,000, a single which was captured by them full share being earned by off the coast of Wales. 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, 10s.

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

The Crown in practice, however, in the following reign, admitted the right of the captor to & share of the takings, 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, eulminating in a 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, 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 inoited 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 much 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, 1s. 8d. 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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