The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

The British reports of their own losses are thus seen largely to exceed those made by the French. According equal confidence to the statements of Sir William Curtis, of Norman, and of Lloyd's list, we should reach an annual loss by capture of 488 British ships; which would give a total, in the twenty-one years of war, from 1793-1814, 275 of 10,248. Norman's grand total of 10,871 considerably exceeds this amount; but it will be safer, in considering a subject of so great importance as the absolute injury done, and effect produced, by war upon commerce, to accept the larger figure, or to say, in round numbers, that eleven thousand British vessels were captured by the enemy during the protracted and desperate wars caused by the French Revolution. It is the great and conspicuous instance of commerce-destroying, carried on over a long series of years, with a vigor and thoroughness never surpassed, and supported, moreover, by an unparalleled closure of the continental markets of Great Britain. The Directory first, and Napoleon afterwards, abandoned all attempts to contest the control of the sea, and threw themselves, as Louis XIV. had done before them, wholly upon a cruising war against commerce. It will be well in this day, when the same tendency so extensively prevails, to examine somewhat carefully what this accepted loss really meant, how it was felt by the British people at the time, and what expectation can reasonably be deduced from it that, by abandoning military control of the sea, and depending exclusively upon scattered cruisers, a country dependent as Great Britain is upon external commerce can be brought to terms.

Evidently, a mere statement of numbers, such as the above, without any particulars as to size, or the value of cargoes, affords but a poor indication of the absolute or relative loss sustained by British commerce. It may, however, be used as a basis, both for comparison with the actual number of vessels entering and clearing annually from British ports, and also for an estimate as to the probable tonnage captured. The annual average of capture, deduced from 11,000 ships in twenty-one years is 524. In the three years 1793-1795, the average annual number of British vessels entering and clearing from ports of Great Britain was 21,560. 276 Dividing by 524, it is found that one fortieth, or two and a half per cent of British shipping, reckoning by numbers, was taken by the enemy. In the three years 1798-1800, 1801 being the year of broken hostilities, the average annual entries and departures were 21,369,[1] which again gives two and a half as the percentage of the captures. It must be noted, also, that only the commerce of England and Scotland with foreign countries, with the colonies, with Ireland and the Channel Islands, and with British India enters into these lists of arrivals and departures. The returns of that day did not take account of British coasters, nor of the local trade of the colonies, nor again of the direct intercourse between Ireland and ports other than those of Great Britain. Yet all these contributed victims to swell the list of prizes, 277 and so to increase very materially the apparent proportion of the latter to a commerce of which the returns cited present only a fraction. Unfortunately, the amount of the coasting trade cannot now be ascertained, 278 and the consequent deduction from the calculated two and a half per cent of loss can only be conjectured.

To obtain the tonnage loss there appears to the writer no fairer means than to determine the average tonnage of the vessels entering and departing as above, at different periods of the war. In the three years 1793-1795, the average size of each ship entering or sailing from the ports of Great Britain, including the Irish trade, was 121 tons. In the year 1800 the average is 126 tons. In 1809 it has fallen again to 121, and in 1812 to 115 tons. We cannot then go far wrong in allowing 125 tons as the average size of British vessels employed in carrying on the foreign and the coasting trade of Great Britain itself during the war. 279 On this allowance the aggregate tonnage lost in the 11,000 British prizes, would be 1,375,000 in twenty-one years. In these years the aggregate British tonnage entering and leaving the ports of Great Britain, exclusive of the great neutral tonnage employed in carrying for the same trade, amounted to over 55,000,000; 280 so that the loss is again somewhat less than one fortieth, or 2½ per cent.

Another slight indication of the amount of loss, curious from its coincidence with the above deductions, is derived from the report of prize goods received into France in the year ending September, 1800, which amounted to 29,201,676 francs. At the then current value of the franc this was equivalent to £1,216,000. The real value of British exports for 1800 was £56,000,000, the prize goods again being rather less than one fortieth of the amount. The imports, however, being also nearly £56,000,000, the loss on the entire amount falls to one eightieth. It is true that many of these prize goods were probably taken in neutrals, but on the other hand the report does not take into account French capture in the colonies and East Indies; nor those made by Holland and Spain, the allies of France.

If the total number of vessels belonging to Great Britain and all her dependencies be taken, as the standard by which to judge her loss by captures, it will be found that in 1795 they amounted to 16,728;281 in 1800, 17,885;282 in 1805, 22,051;283 in 1810, 23,703.284 Using again 524 as the annual number of captures, the annual proportion of loss is seen gradually to fall from a very little over 3 per cent, in the first year, to somewhat less than 2½ per cent, in the last.

Finally, it may be added that the Lloyd's list before quoted gives the total number of losses by sea risks, 1793-1800, as 2,967; which, being contrasted with the losses by capture, 3,639, shows that the danger from enemy's cruisers very little exceeded those of the ocean. To offset, though only partially, her own losses, Great Britain received prize goods, during the same years, to the amount of over £5,000,000. 285 There were also engaged in carrying on her commerce, in 1801, under the British flag, 2,779 vessels, measuring 369,563 tons, that had been brought into her ports as prizes; which numbers had increased in 1811 to 4,023 ships and 536,240 tons. 286

Taking everything together, it seems reasonable to conclude that the direct loss to the nation, by the operation of hostile cruisers, did not exceed 2½ per cent of the commerce of the Empire; and that this loss was partially made good by the prize ships and merchandise taken by its own naval vessels and privateers. A partial, if not a complete, compensation for her remaining loss is also to be found in the great expansion of her mercantile operations carried on under neutral flags; for, although this too was undoubtedly harassed by the enemy, yet to it almost entirely was due the increasing volume of trade that poured through Great Britain to and from the continent of Europe, every ton of which left a part of its value to swell the bulk of British wealth. The writings of the period show that the injuries due to captured shipping passed unremarked amid the common incidents and misfortunes of life; neither their size nor their effects were great enough to attract public notice, amid the steady increase of national wealth and the activities concerned in amassing it. "During all the operations of war and finance," says one writer, "the gains of our enterprising people were beyond all calculation, however the unproductive classes may have suffered from the depreciation of money and the inequalities of taxation. Our commerce has become more than double its greatest extent during the happiest years of peace." 287 There were, indeed, darker shades to the picture, for war means suffering as well as effort; but with regard to the subject-matter of this chapter, Commerce, and its fate in this war, there was for many years but one voice, for but one was possible. The minister, essentially a master of trade and finance, delighted year by year to enlarge upon the swelling volume of business and the growing returns of the revenue. Not only did the new taxes bring in liberally, but the older ones were increasingly productive. These signs of prosperity were not seen all at once. The first plunge into the war was followed, as it always is, by a shrinking of the system and a contraction of the muscles; but as the enemy more and more surrendered the control of the sea, as the naval victories of the years 1797 and 1798 emphasized more and more the absolute dominion of Great Britain over it, and as the new channels of enterprise became familiar, the energies of the people expanded to meet the new opportunities.

The share borne by neutral shipping in the extension and maintenance of this extraordinary fabric of prosperity, thus existing in the midst of all the sorrow, suffering, and waste of war, must next be considered; for it was the cause of the remarkable measures taken by both belligerents against neutral trade, which imparted so singular and desolating a character to the closing years of the struggle and affected deeply the commerce of the whole world. At the very beginning of the war Great Britain proceeded to avail herself of the services of neutrals, by a remission of that part of the Navigation Act which required three fourths of the crews of British merchantmen to be British subjects. On the 30th of April, 1793, this was so modified as to permit three fourths to be foreigners, to replace the large body taken for the fleets. This was followed, from time to time, as the number of enemies multiplied through the extending conquests and alliances of France, by a series of orders and proclamations, infringing more and more upon the spirit of the Act, with the direct and obvious purpose of employing neutral vessels to carry on operations hitherto limited to the British flag. The demands of the navy for seamen, the risks of capture, the delays of convoy, entirely arrested, and even slightly set back, the development of the British carrying trade; while at the same time the important position of Great Britain as the great manufacturing nation, coinciding with a diminution in the productions of the Continent, consequent upon the war, and a steadily growing demand for manufactured goods on the part of the United States, called imperiously for more carriers. The material of British traffic was increasing with quickened steps, at the very time that her own shipping was becoming less able to bear it. Thus in 1797, when the British navy was forced to leave the Mediterranean, all the Levant trade, previously confined to British ships, was thrown open to every neutral. In 1798, being then at war with Spain, the great raw material, Spanish wool, essential to the cloth manufactures, was allowed to enter in vessels of any neutral country. The produce even of hostile colonies could be imported by British subjects in neutral bottoms, though not for consumption in England, but for re-exportation; a process by which it paid a toll to Great Britain, without directly affecting the reserved market of the British colonist. The effect of these various conditions and measures can best be shown by a few figures, which indicate at once the expansion of British commerce, the arrest of British carrying trade, and the consequent growth of the neutral shipping. In 1792, the last year of peace, the total British exports and imports amounted to £44,565,000; in 1796 to £53,706,000; in 1800, the last unbroken year of war, to £73,723,000. 288 For the same years the carrying of this trade was done, in 1792, by 3,151,389 tons of British, and 479,630 tons of foreign shipping; in 1796, by 2,629,575 British, and 998,427 foreign; in 1800, by 2,825,078 British and 1,448,287 foreign. Thus, while there was so great an increase in the commerce of the kingdom, and it employed nearly 650,000 more tons of shipping in 1800 than in 1792, the amount carried in British ships had fallen off; and the proportion of neutral bottoms had risen from thirteen to nearly thirty-four per cent.

The significance of these facts could not escape the French government, nor yet the jealousies of certain classes connected with the carrying trade in Great Britain herself; but in the first war the latter were not joined by the other powerful and suffering interests, which gradually impelled the ministry into a series of acts deeply injurious to all neutrals, but chiefly to the United States. In France, the early effusiveness of the revolutionists toward England, based upon the hope that she too would be swept into the torrent of their movement, had been quickly chilled and turned to bitterness, greater even than that which had so long divided the two nations. Victorious everywhere upon the Continent, the government saw before it only one unconquerable enemy, the Power of the Sea; it knew that she, by her subsidies and her exhortations, maintained the continental states in their recurring hostilities, and it saw her alone, amid the general confusion and impoverishment, preserve quiet and increase a wealth which was not only brilliant, but solid. The Directory therefore reached the conclusion, which Napoleon made the basis of his policy and which he never wearied of proclaiming, that Great Britain maintained the war and promoted the discord of nations for the simple purpose of founding her own prosperity upon the ruin of all other commerce, her power upon the ruin of all other navies. 289 At the same time the French government held tenaciously to that profound delusion, the bequest to it from past generations of naval officers and statesmen, that a war directed against the commerce of Great Britain was a sure means of destroying her. It knew that hosts of privateers were employed, and that very many British prizes were brought in; yet, withal, the great Sea Power moved steadily on, evidently greater and stronger as the years went by. It knew also that her manufactures were increasing, that their products filled the Continent; that the produce of the East and of the West, of the Baltic and of the Mediterranean, centred in Great Britain; and that through her, not the Continent only, but France herself, drew most of her tropical articles of consumption. There was but one solution for this persistent escape from apparently sure destruction; and that was to be found in the support of the neutral carrier and the pockets of the neutral consumer. From this premise the fatal logic of the French Revolution was irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that, as every neutral ship engaged in the British carrying trade was a help to England, it was consequently an enemy to France and liable to capture. 290 Napoleon but amplified this precedent when he declared that there were no more neutrals, and placed before Sweden, longing only for quiet, the option "war with France or cannon-balls for English vessels approaching your ports."

The exceptionally intense spirit which animated the parties to this war trenched with unusual severity upon the interests of neutral powers, always more or less in conflict with the aims of belligerents. These questions also received new importance, because now appeared for the first time a neutral maritime state, of great extent and rapidly growing, whose interests and ambitions at that time pointed to shipping and carrying trade as forms of enterprise for which it had received from nature peculiar facilities. In all previous wars the Americans had acted as the colonists of Great Britain, either loyal or in revolt. In 1793 they had for four years been a nation in the real sense of the word, and Washington's first term closed. In the very first Congress measures were taken for developing American shipping, by differential duties upon native and foreign ships. 291 From the impulse thus given, combined with the opening offered by the increase of British trade and the diminished employment of British shipping, the ship-builders and merchants extended their operations rapidly. By the report of a committee of the House, January 10, 1803, it appears that the merchant tonnage of the United States was then inferior to that of no other country, except Great Britain. 292 In 1790 there had entered her ports from abroad, 355,000 tons of her own shipping and 251,000 foreign, of which 217,000 were British. 293 In the year 1801 there entered 799,304 tons of native shipping, 294 and of foreign but 138,000. 295 The amount of British among the latter is not stated; but in the year 1800 there cleared from Great Britain under her own flag, for the United States, but 14,381 tons. 296 Figures like these give but a comparative and partial view of the activity of American shipping, leaving out of account all the carrying done by it outside the ken of the home authorities; but it is safe to say that the United States contributed annually at least six hundred thousand tons to maintain the traffic of the world, which, during those eventful years, centred in Great Britain and ministered to her power. Among the forms of gain thus opened to American traders there was one to which allusion only will here be made, because at a later period it became the source of very great trouble, leading step by step to the war of 1812. This was the carriage of the productions of French and other colonies, enemies of Great Britain, to the United States, and thence re-exporting them to Europe.

Besides the new state in the Western Hemisphere, there were three others whose isolated position had hitherto given them the character of neutrals in the maritime wars of the eighteenth century. These were the Baltic countries, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, which had combined in 1780 to defend their neutral rights, if need were, by force of arms. The power of this confederacy to assume the same attitude in 1793 was broken by the policy of Russia. By whatever motives swayed, the Empress Catharine took decided ground against the French Revolution. On the 25th of March, 1793, a convention between her and the British government was signed, by which both parties agreed, not only to close their own ports against France and not to permit the exportation of food to that country, but also "to unite all their efforts to prevent other powers, not implicated in the war, from giving, on this occasion of common concern to every civilized state, any protection whatever, directly or indirectly in consequence of their neutrality, to the commerce or property of the French on the sea." 297 How the empress understood this engagement was shown by her notification, during the same summer, to the courts of Sweden and Denmark, that she would station a fleet in the North Sea to prevent neutrals bound to France from proceeding. 298 Great Britain had already—June 8, 1793—directed the commanders of cruisers to detain all vessels loaded with flour or grain, bound to French ports, and to send them to England, where the cargo would be purchased and freight paid by the British government. 299 These instructions were duly communicated to the government of the neutral states, which protested with more or less vigor and tenacity, but found themselves helpless to resist force with force. Singularly enough, the French government had preceded the British on this occasion, having issued orders to the same effect on the 9th of the previous May; but the fact appears to have escaped the ministry, for, in justifying their action to the United States, they do not allude to it. Their course is defended on the broad ground that, from the character of the war and the situation of France, there was a fair prospect of starving her into submission, 300 and that under such circumstances provisions, always a questionable article, became contraband of war. The answer was not satisfactory to the neutral, deprived of part of his expected gains, but the argument was one of those that admit of no appeal except to arms. A further justification of the order was found by the British ministry in the undoubted fact that "the French government itself was the sole legal importer of grain in France" at that time; and therefore "the trade was no longer to be regarded as a mercantile speculation of individuals, but as an immediate operation of the very persons who have declared war, and are now carrying it on, against Great Britain." The American minister to France, Monroe, confirms this, in his letter of October 16, 1794: "The whole commerce of France, to the absolute exclusion of individuals, is carried on by the government itself." 301

Soon after, on the 6th of November, 1793, another order was issued by the British ministry, directing the seizure of "all ships laden with goods the produce of any colony belonging to France, or carrying provisions or other supplies for the use of any such colony." This order was based upon the Rule of 1756, so called from the war in which it first came conspicuously into notice, and the principle of which, as stated by British authorities, was that a trade forbidden to neutrals by the laws of a country, during peace, could not be lawfully carried on by them in time of war, for the convenience of the belligerent; because, by such employment, their ships "were in effect incorporated in the enemy's navigation, having adopted his commerce and character and identified themselves with his interests and purposes." 302 At that time the colonial trade was generally reserved to the mother country; and against it particularly, together with the coasting trade, similarly restricted, was this ruling of the British courts and government directed. Neutrals replied, "Because the parent country monopolizes in peace the whole commerce of its colonies, does it follow that in war it should have no right to regulate it at all?" 303 "We deny that municipal regulations, established in peace, can in any wise limit the public rights of neutrals in time of war." 304 It is evident that these two lines of argument do not fairly meet each other; they resemble rather opposite and equal weights in a balance, which will quickly be overturned when passion or interest, combined with power, is thrown in upon either side. Starting from such fundamentally different premises, interested parties might argue on indefinitely in parallel lines, without ever approaching a point of contact.

The chief present interest in this question, referring as it does to an obsolete colonial policy, is as illustrative of one of those dead-locks, which, occurring at a critical moment, when passion or interest is aroused, offer no solution but by war. It was useless to point out that Great Britain relaxed in every direction her own peace regulations, for the advantage of British commerce in the present contest. The reply was perfectly apt, that she did not dispute the right of her enemy to avail himself of any help the neutral could give; she only asserted the determination not to permit the neutral to extend it with impunity. There was no doubt, in the mind of any considerable body of Englishmen, as to the perfect soundness of the English doctrine. Lord Howick, who, as Mr. Grey, had embarrassed his party in 1792 by the exuberance of his liberalism, 305 as foreign minister in 1807 wrote: "Neutrality, properly considered, does not consist in taking advantage of every situation between belligerent states by which emolument may accrue to the neutral, whatever may be the consequences to either belligerent party; but in observing a strict and honest impartiality, so as not to afford advantage in the war to either; and, particularly, in so far restraining its trade to the accustomed course which it held in time of peace, as not to render assistance to one belligerent in escaping the effects of the other's hostilities." 306 An agreement among any number of the subjects of the interested nation proves nothing as to the right of the question, but the irreconcilable divergence of views at this time shows most clearly the necessity, under which every country lies, to be ready to support its own sense of its rights and honor by force, if necessary.

Under the order of November 6, some hundreds of American ships were seized and brought into West Indian ports by British cruisers. 307 The application of the order to them was, however, liable to two serious objections, even admitting the principle. In the first place, it was made without warning, under a rule that was at least not generally accepted; and in the second place, the trade between the French West India Islands and the United States had been permitted, before the war, in vessels of sixty tons and upwards. 308 In the year ending September 30, 1790, fifty-seven thousand tons of American shipping entered home ports from the French colonies. The trade, therefore, was one that existed prior to the war, and so did not come under the rule of 1756. 309 The order of November 6 was not made public until nearly the end of the year; the United States minister in London not receiving a copy until Christmas Day. He hastened at once to protest, but before he could obtain an audience a second was issued, January 8, 1794, revoking the former and limiting the operations of the rule to vessels bound from the colonies direct to Europe. Although the principle was maintained by the new order, and not admitted by the United States, still, as their own trade was excepted, much dissatisfaction was removed.