Conclusion: Prizemaking Appraised

Summary

When the Treaty of Ghent brought the War of 1812 to an official close on Christmas Eve, 1814, it marked the end of privateering as an international weapon of war. Over the centuries privateering, also known as commerce raiding and guerre de course, had evolved well-understood procedures for seizing prizes and legally securing them through the courts. Seventeenth-century English jurisdictional wrangling had clarified the authority of the High Court of Admiralty and colonial vice-admiralty courts to adjudicate questions of prize. By the early nineteenth century prizemaking had become an accepted weapon in the naval arsenal, while privateering played a vital role in the war against trade. In examining the development of private armed warfare from its earliest known records to its role in Atlantic Canada in the War of 1812, this study has compared the prizemaking role of privateers from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with that of Royal Navy vessels stationed along the American coast.

From 18 June 1812 to mid-February 1815, when the news of the peace finally reached Washington, hundreds of British and American privateers as well as naval vessels from both sides captured thousands of prizes. Compared to the prizes taken by larger, more numerous and heavily armed American privateers, provincial captures ran to smaller vessels with less valuable cargoes that would surrender without a fight. Investors in provincial privateering belonged to the maritime merchant class rather than the political or social elite. They were happy to combine patriotism with profit but did not reinvest unless there were gains to be made. Contrary to the stereotype of undisciplined freebooters covering their quasi-piratical activities with a letter of marque, the privateers of Atlantic Canada were well capitalized, law-abiding, business-like, generally well-behaved, and moderately successful.

The transformation of private armed warfare from a medieval expedient for resolving individual losses to a legally sanctioned act of war was a long, frequently contentious process. In Britain, maritime custom and judicial decisions resulted in the creation of a body of international prize law and a High Court of Admiralty to administer it. This legal tradition was exported to Britain's colonies in North America from which developed vice-admiralty courts.