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a claim to joint capture enure to an associated cruizer, where, having before reconnoitred the prize, she had actually stood off on another course. (The Lord Middleton, 4 Rob. 155; see, to the same effect, The Rattlesnake, 2 Dod. 32.) A vessel detached from a squadron by a signal to chase, and which, after accomplishing that duty, engages in a second chase and captures, is exempt from any claim to joint prize on the part of the associated squadron. Le Bon Aventure (1 Acton, 211) was the case of a French ship captured by H. M. S. Albion under the circumstances described; the associated squadron asserted a claim of constructive joint capture, but the Lords of Appeal rejected it. "Upon the principle thus advanced," said Sir W. Grant," it is necessary to inquire, under the circumstances of the present case, whether a vessel commencing a second chase in sight of a fleet of which she had constituted a part before she had been detached by signal upon a former chase, and capturing the second chase at any distance from such a fleet, would necessarily, upon this principle, be compelled to let in the claim of the whole fleet to share in a prize so made, notwithstanding such fleet afforded no assistance or co-operation in the capture, but actually bore away from the captor on another tack. No such principle has ever been recognized."

There is one species of recapture from the enemy which vests the whole interest in the recaptor-namely, where an enemy's ship taken originally by one English vessel, and lost again to an enemy's cruizer, is subsequently recaptured by another English ship. It has occasionally become a subject of discussion in the Prize Court of this country, and also in France, whether

any interest revested in the first seizor; and in 1778, in the case of The Lucretia, the Court of Admiralty was disposed, though apparently in departure from more ancient precedents, to consider the first taker as the captor, and the subsequent taker as the recaptor, entitled to a high salvage. It does not appear that this case was appealed from. But in another instance the same point was much contested before the Lords of Appeal, in the case of The Polly (Lords, 21st Nov. 1780), in which the prize had been rescued by the American crew, and retaken, and condemned to the last captor in the Vice-Admiralty Court of New York. On appeal, brought by the first seizor, the Lords affirmed the sentence of the court below, holding that the original captor had not completed his possession; that the incipient interest which had been acquired by the first taker was entirely divested by the subsequent rescue, and that the final British captor was to be considered as the efficient captor, and as such entitled to the whole benefit of the prize. In the case of The Marguerite (3rd April, 1781), the same question was brought before the Court of Appeal, with the only dif ference, that the first recapture had been made by a French frigate. The Lords pronounced a decree to the same effect, and condemned the appellant in costs. Valin (Traité des Prises, c. 6, § 1) says, that this point was established in the French Court of Prize in favour of the ultimate captor, by a decree in 1748.

RANSOM.

When by lawful means a belligerent had possessed himself of property belonging to his enemy, it was for

merly the custom among almost all nations to redeem But ransom from the

it from his hands by ransom.

hands of an enemy is now little known to the commercial law of England; for, by the statute 22 Geo. 3, c. 25, the ransom of any ships, or merchandizes on board the same, belonging to any subject of this country, and taken by the subjects of any state at war with his majesty, or by any person committing hostilities against his majesty's subjects, is absolutely prohibited; and by the statutes of 43 Geo. 3, c. 160, and of the 45 Geo. 3, c. 72, such ransom is again prohibited, unless in the case of extreme necessity, to be allowed by the Court of Admiralty; and all contracts for ransom contrary to these statutes are made void and subjected to a penalty of 500l. (See also 55 Geo. 3, c. 160, ss. 9, 10, 11, 12.)" Ransoms," said Lord Stowell, in the case of the ships taken at Genoa, (ub. sup.) "have been forbidden as subject to great abuse, being, in the common acceptation, contracts entered into at sea by individual captors, and liable to be abused, to the great inconvenience of neutral trade. But even ransoms under circumstances of necessity are still allowed. A ransom bill, however, when not locally prohibited, is a war contract protected by good faith and the law of nations; and though the contract is regarded in England as tending to relax the energy of war and deprive cruizers of the chance of recapture, "it is in many views" (writes Chancellor Kent, i. 114) "highly reasonable and humane. Other maritime nations regard ransom as binding, and to be classed among the few legitimate commercia belli." Ransom has never been prohibited in the United States; and the act of congress of August 2nd, 1813, which interdicted the

use of British licences or passes, did not apply to the contract of ransom. (See Azuni on Maritime Law, c. 4, art. 6; Emerigon, i. c. 12, s. 21; Valin, ii. art. 66; Le Guidon, c. 6, art. 2; Grotius, book 3, c. 19; Goodrich v. Gordon, 15 John's Rep. 6.) The effect of a ransom is equivalent to a safe-conduct granted by the authority of the state to which the captor belongs, and it binds the commanders of other cruizers to respect the safe-conduct thus given; not only the cruizers of the belligerent nation, but, under the implied obligation of the treaty of alliance, those also of the captor's allies. (Miller v. The Resolution, 2 Dallas, 15.) The safe-conduct so implied, however, requires that the vessel should be found within the course prescribed, and within the time limited by the contract, unless forced out of her course by stress of weather or unavoidable necessity. (Pothier, Traité du Droit de Proprieté, No. 134, 135; Valin, Ord. des Prises, art. 19.) The ransom stipulated is due, even should the vessel ransomed be wrecked before she arrives in port, for the captor had not insured against the perils of the sea, but only against recapture by cruizers of his own nation or of its allies. (Pothier, No. 138.) If the captor himself should be taken by the enemy, together with his ransom bill, the ransom becomes part of the lawful conquest of the enemy, and the debtors of the ransom are discharged from their contract. (Id., No. 139.)

In the British courts no suit will lie by the enemy in propriâ personâ on a ransom bill, notwithstanding it is a contract arising jure belli. (Anthon v. Fisher, Douglas, 649; The Hoop, 1 Rob. 169.) The only remedy to enforce payment of the ransom bill, for the

benefit of the enemy captor, is by an action by the imprisoned hostage in the courts of his own country, for the recovery of his freedom (The Rebecca, 5 Rob. 102); though Lord Mansfield emphatically declared his opinion that the contract was worthy to be sustained by sound morality and good policy, and as governed by the law of nations and the eternal rules of justice. (Cornu v. Blackburne, Douglas, 641.) Both in France and in Holland the practice is to sustain such actions by the owner of the ransom contract. Ricard v. Bettenham, 3 Burr. 1734; Pothier, ub. sup. No. 144; The Lord Wellington, 2 Gallis. 104; Maissonnaire and others v. Keating, ib. 336; Gerard v. Ware, Peters' C. R. 142; and Moodie v. Brig Harriet, Bees. Rep. 128, are leading American cases of

ransom.

RECAPTURE.

A prize taken from the enemy who had made it is called recapture, and the person who takes it the recaptor. The term recapture, as distinguished from rescue, is ordinarily employed when a prize, having been captured by an enemy, is recovered from his possession by the arrival of a friendly force; whereas the term rescue more usually denotes, that recovery which is effected by the rising of the captured party himself against his captor.

"There is no rule, operating with the proper force and authority of a general law, respecting the time when property vests in the captor of a recaptured vessel. It may be fit there should be some rule, and

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