HMS Favourite 21 May 1762

[James]

Does anyone have any information on the HMS Favourite which gave support to HMS Active in the capture of Spanish ship Hermione on 21 May 1762?
What was Favourite's share of the prize money?

James

[Peter]

There were seven ships to bear the name; the HMS Favourite in question was probably a sloop of 14 guns of 313 bm (builder's measure (weight)) 96.5ft long and 27 feet wide. Built by Sparrow at Shoreham, Sussex, Uk, launched 15.12.1757.Sold 21.1.1784.

Prize Money for the capture:
Total Prize money was £519,705.

Each captain received £65,000
Every Lt. £13,000
The seaman £485.

It was a considerable amount of money in those days. Prize money was the reason that many seaman and officer's joined up. Cochrane used it on his recruiting posters.
It was an emotive subject with officers getting the largest slice. Even the station admiral had his finger in the pie, with any ship within his jurisdiction that got money so he took his share.

There is a famous cartoon of two seaman leaning on a cannon and the one turns to the other and says, 'if only officers had the same share in death in battle as that they got in prize money.' Or words like that.

TONNAGE, or BM derived from tun, a large cask, in which wine was transported. In 1694, when a law was introduced in Britain requiring the marking of a waterline on merchant ships, both when light (in ballast) and fully laden, this tonnage formula was officially adopted, though marginally amended to make the product of length, beam, and depth divisible by 94 instead of 100. This remained the standard ship measurement until 1773, when more accurate measurements were introduced. The formula became: L being the length and B being the maximum beam.
(L-3/5B) x B x ½B
94
The result became tonnage and was known as the Builder’s Old Measure (B.O.M), sometimes referred to as Builder’s Measure, (B.M.). It remained in force until the advent of iron for shipbuilding and steam for propulsion.

[James]

Actually the officers & crew of the Favourite recirved a reduced share compared to the Active's share!

James

[ionia]

[PMarione]

Normally prize money was equally divided among the ships taking part in an action. So if a ship had a lesser crew each people could get more than a ship with a bigger crew.

Prize money was the source of many conflicts among officers: for example ships which were just in sight during an action without taking an active part where allowed to share.

Another source of conflict was that the C-in-C received a third of the captains share even if they where at 500 miles of the action, thence the big lawsuit between HN and St Vincent.

[ionia]

[PMarione]

You are right. Sorry, my mistake.

"The whole of the net produce to be divided in 8 equal parts, 3/8 for the captain (1/8 for the flag officer), 1/8 for the officers, 1/8 for the warrant officers and the rest for the rest"
There was no official rules for the distribution among each class so I don't know if a landsman received the same share as an AB.

Source: the Prizes of War by Richard Hill

[James]

Do a Google search, type in Hermione 1762 and see what the first link gives you, someone must've reposted the page you'll see, I kept getting error messages when I tried to relocate the page!

James

[Peter]

Capture of The Hermione

Spithead, 29 July 1762

Thanks to God, I am once more arrived safe at Old England. We have brought in with us a very rich Spanish prize, which we took last Whitsun-Monday, as coming from Lima to Cadiz. A little before eight o'clock in the evening we began the attack by giving her a broadside; she returned none. We then put about ship, to get to windward of her, she, seeing our intent, did the same, but mist stays, which was greatly to our advantage, for we soon got up to her, and made a repeat of our first compliment, but much fiercer. Then our Captain hailed the Hermione, and asked where she came from, and was answered from Lima in the River of Plate, and was a King's frigate, a man of war.

Our Captain answered he was an English man of war, and that if he did not strike his colours, he would fire every gun in the ship into her. The answer returned was the fire of one gun, followed by a whole broadside of great guns and small arms. As soon as their first gun was fired we began smart work on both sides; our ship by the continual firing, was nothing but smoak fire and noise, in the midst of which every man strove to out-do each the other; by which warm work they were so chagrined that they struck their colours about ten o'clock; so that we were two hours with her in parlying and fighting, for, part of the time, she would neither fight nor strike till we obliged her to it.

I suppose you have heard of our taking the privateer last Easter-Sunday in the evening, that engagement was a great deal sharper than the other, tho', thank God, we have but one man wounded in both.

P.S. - We expect to receive eight hundred pounds a man, with the Favourite, tho' she did not come up till after the striking of the Hermione, but she was in company.

Prize Money
The Active £ s. d.
Captain 65,053 0 0
Three Commissioned Officers 13,004 14 1 each
Eight Warrant Officers 4,336 3 2 each
Twenty Petty Officers 1,806 10 3 each
158 Seamen and Marines 485 5 43/4 each
The Favourite
£ s. d.
Captain 64,872 0 0
Two Commissioned Officers 12,974 10 9 each
Seven Warrant Officers 4,324 16 11 each
Sixteen Petty Officers 1,802 0 4 each
110 Seamen and Marines 482 2 5 each


Lloyd's Evening Post and British Chronicle, 6 August 1762

Hello James,

I have posted the above article from Google, I see what you mean, you have a good point with regard to the differences in pay. I have in the past come across documents where the clerk copying has simply got it wrong, However, there are too many differences here.

Perhaps PS explains the reason. I think to answer this properly the original documents would need to be looked at.

[ionia]

The small differences are accounted for by the fact that the figures quoted are not just prize money but include the bounty-money (I have explained this in an earlier post).

For an accurate account of how the sale proceeds and expenses were calculated and the bounty-money added to the ACTIVE's share, see Beatson's "Naval and Military Memoirs", Vol. 3, Page 417. It is on line at www.archive.org.

http://www.archive.org/details/navalmilitarymem03beatuoft

I enjoyed the colourful account given by the letter writer describing the capture of the HERMIONE. Other accounts seem unanimous in saying that she surrendered without resistance!
_________________
Ionia

[Peter]

Many thanks for once again elucidating on the subject, I think my confusion has come in from 'Bounty Money', paid at recruiting centres to encourage volunteers for service in the British Navy in time of war.

[Peter]

...Although the seaman loosely referred to it all as 'prize money' in fact the capture of an enemy ship belonging to the French Navy ... could yield head and prize money, which was shared according to a traditional scale.

Head, bounty (not to be confused with the bounty paid for joining the navy) and gun money were the same thing, a payment for capturing an enemy warship.

In the days when it was called 'bounty money' it was a payment of 'ten pounds a gun', to be shared among the captors. This was so little (barely £1 a man when one 74-gun ship captured another) that it was later changed to to 'five pounds a head', counting every man on the muster book of the enemy ship, which would have meant a prize of £4 a man for the same ships....

Dudley Pope, Life in Nelson's Navy, (1997, Chatham), p.232.

[PMarione]

Head (gun) money arose from the fact that the King (the RN) was the only possible buyer for a ship of war (still the case today, only states can be interested in a ship of war) and so if the RN was not interested the captured ship was just junk and one can imagine that taking an enemy ship of war was more difficult than capturing a fat merchantman.

Prize money certainly was a very good incentive to join the RN in time of war but was also the origin of a lot of work for lawyers as every prize had to be adjudicated by the Admiralty Court. The Navy List of 1836 shows the annoucement of distribution of prize money of captures done in 1812! (The share of the people who had died or didn't claim them were going to Greenwich Hospital).
Taking merchantmen was not without risk too: if for some reason (like taking a neutral or ally ship) the Admiralty Court didn't adjudicate a prize, the captain had to pay all the costs and losses. See all the problems HN got after his overzealous treatment of the American ships in the West Indies.

@+P

[James]

Can someone please translate what was written in the extract posted as a link by Ionia, I folloewed the link as posted and found the section about the prize money for Active & Favourite, maybe the program I used to read the document messed with the text.

James

[PMarione]

Here is the extract in pdf format
http://www.creativem.com/ftp/incoming/Pages_from_Beatson_V3.pdf