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The Prize Game: Lawful Looting on the High Seas in the Days of Fighting Sail

The Prize Game: Lawful Looting on the High Seas in the Days of Fighting Sail

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Government-Sponsored Piracy - Glorious Too
Review: A neat little book on legal niceties of the sea anwering all your questions about Prize, that strange doctrine of international law dealing with the rewards for capturing enemy vessels at sea . Legal mysteries solved by this book include: whether an eighteenth-century admiralty court in Britain might treat an English-speaking privateer as a traitor, whether an American revolutionary might lawfully seize a British merchantman off the Norwegian coast, how many days' notice are required before a port's trade with neutral vessels can be blockaded; whether a seized Confederate vessel counts as prize in a Union court and whether modern sailors still have the right to share the spoils of an enemy vessel. Sterling stuff.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Prize Game by Donald A. Petrie
Review: This book is a good resource for history buffs or anyone who's been drawn into the world of historical nautical fiction created by the likes of Patrick O'Brian or C.S. Forester. 'Prizes' were vessels of a rival nation captured by naval warships and privateers (private vessels operating under letters of marque and reprisal from their government). The taking and disposition of prizes were strictly 'regulated' by international law. The author: seaman, soldier, lawyer, businessman, politician and publisher, gives a good overview of the intricacies of prizes during the age of sail. He uses several case studies to discuss the practice of ransoming vessels, sea cartels, the distinction between piracy and privateering, prize courts, blockades, and the rights and responsibilities of everybody involved in the taking of prizes at sea. He concludes with a chapter that summarizes the rules of the prize game. His discussion focuses mostly on American actions during the period from the Revolutionary to Civil War, but that discussion invariably involves U.S. relations and interactions with England, France, Denmark and Norway. While the narrative lacked the excitement of the chase and capture that I find so addictive in Horatio Hornblower, it provided a historical foundation to make Hornblower's exploits that much more enjoyable. The work is well annotated for those wanting to dig deeper into the history or law of the naval prize.


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