Privateers, Cruisers and Colliers: The Limits of International Maritime Law in the Nineteenth Centur

Feb 2005, Vol. 150, No. 1
By Damian O'Connor

The medieval consolato del mare established the basic principle of maritime law that in wartime it was perfectly legal to capture an enemy ship and dispose of its cargo howsoever. For a maritime power like eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, this was an important weapon of economic warfare. But after the Crimean War, Lord John Russell, who handled Britain's negotiations, abandoned the consolato del mare at the Congress of Paris. The immediate reason for abandoning the consolato del mare was a belief that because Britain had the most commerce afloat, she had the most to lose from commerce raiding. However, the threat to the shipping lanes came primarily from small, lightly armed, converted merchant vessels acting as 'Cruizers'. These vessels, although no match for a warship, were perfectly adequate for commerce raiding by reason of their much longer range. Bolting a couple of guns onto a merchant steamer instantly turned it into a viable weapon of war when employed against unarmed steamers. Such raids would advertise to all who cared to look that the British Empire was a paper tiger rather than a puissant lion. The fears of cruiser warfare coupled with the failure of the agreements on the consolato del mare and privateering had a further result in that it persuaded Lord Carnarvon to bring together the army, navy and colonies into a unified planning forum. Lord John Russell had hoped to make Britain safer by appealing to the protection of international law while Carnarvon took a more realistic view: only British strength could ensure British safety because evading international law was so easy.

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