Joanna of Aberdeen and HMS Mermaid: Ransom, Recapture, and Final Judgment
In the spring of 1711 a trading ship from Scotland, the Joanna of Aberdeen, set out across the North Atlantic on a voyage to Virginia. Near the Orkney Islands on May 17, 1711, a French privateer named the Pontchartrain seized her. Think of a privateer as a kind of legal pirate: a private ship with government permission to attack enemy ships during wartime. The French crew came aboard the Joanna, took four bales and two casks of goods from the cargo, and even took 26 gold guineas from the master, Alexander Inglis. They then sailed the captured Joanna toward the Scottish coast while staying nearby themselves.
Five days later, on May 22, 1711, the owners and master of the Joanna agreed to pay a ransom—200 guineas and an extra £5—to get their ship released quickly. The privateer wrote a “ransom brief,” a paper that said the Joanna could safely continue her voyage and that other French ships should not attack her during that trip. With this paper in hand, the Joanna sailed on, grateful to be free again. Up to this point, it might seem like the story should have ended: the ship was released, the ransom was paid, and everyone could go home. But at sea, things can change fast, and the law has long memories.
Only six days after the ransom payment, on May 28, 1711, a British warship, His Majesty’s Ship the Mermaid, captured the French privateer off the Scottish coast. This was important because the privateer had not yet carried the stolen things into a safe enemy harbor. When the Mermaid’s crew searched the Pontchartrain, they found the same kinds of items taken from the Joanna: the four bales and two casks, coins matching the 26 guineas taken from Master Inglis’s pocket, and also the 200 guineas and £5 paid as ransom. Everything was still on the privateer because the French ship had stayed on the coast rather than hurrying back to a protected French port.
After the capture, the Mermaid brought the privateer into Leith. On June 12, 1711, the Scottish Admiralty Court condemned the French privateer as a lawful prize of war. By law at that time, captured enemy ships and their goods were to be delivered to an official “agent for prizes,” following an Act of Parliament made in Queen Anne’s reign. That is what happened: the ship, the goods, and the money were handed over to the prize agent. Then something unlucky occurred. The agent loaded the bales and casks onto another ship, the Greyhound, to move them toward a sale. The Greyhound was wrecked, and those goods were lost at sea. Still, the key legal questions remained: who owned the money and goods in the first place, and who should get paid now that a British warship had retaken them from the enemy?
Because the Mermaid and its captain, William Collier, were the ones who captured the privateer, the owners and master of the Joanna brought a case in the Scottish Admiralty Court against him, asking for the return of the 26 guineas, the goods, and the ransom money. Their basic idea was simple enough for anyone to understand: “Those things were ours; the French never got them safely back to their own home ports; the British navy caught the French ship before that could happen; so the things should come back to us.” At first, a default decree went against Captain Collier when he did not appear. He then went to the civil court, the Court of Session, to suspend that decree, saying he was away on the country’s business when the Admiralty Court acted. The Court of Session allowed him back into the case and treated the dispute as if it were a normal lawsuit.
On February 13, 1713, the Court of Session made a key ruling: the money and goods taken by the privateer, if not included in the written ransom bill itself, were still the property of the Scottish owners. Since the French privateer had stayed on the Scottish coast and had not carried the goods into a safe enemy harbor, the ownership had not changed. In plain words: if you grab something at sea but you don’t bring it into your own protected port, the law treats the thing as still belonging to its original owner, and if a friendly navy retakes it, it goes back. The court also said it would soon decide what to do about the ransom money listed on the ransom brief.
Three days later, on February 16, 1713, the Court of Session decided that the ransom money—those 200 guineas and £5—should also be treated as belonging to the Joanna’s owners and master. This might feel surprising, because ransom money is paid voluntarily to get a ship released. But the court explained the logic. A ransom made under pressure at sea is not like a simple store purchase. People pay to avoid a bigger harm, with the hope that a friendly navy might capture the enemy and help them recover what they lost. If the French had kept the ship and had not taken any ransom, and then the British had recaptured it, the ship and her cargo would clearly have gone back to the owners. So, if the ransom money took the place of the ship and cargo, and the enemy still had that money when they were captured, then the ransom money should be treated the same way the ship and cargo would have been treated: it should go back to the original owners. The court also looked at the facts and found signs that the exact gold was still on board. The dates told the story. The ransom was paid on May 22, the privateer was captured on May 28, and the French ship had stayed along the coast the whole time, leaving little chance for the money to be swapped out or sent away. The prize agent’s receipt even showed there were 226 guineas on board (the 200 for ransom plus the 26 taken from the master), with no extra gold beyond that.
Captain Collier appealed to the House of Lords in London, the highest court in such matters. His team argued that a ransom is a proper wartime deal: the ship got freedom, the privateer got money, and ownership of that money should pass to the privateer like any other payment. They also tried a practical point: from May 22 to May 28 there was time for coins to change hands, so how can anyone be sure the very same pieces of gold were on board? And they said a statute—6 Anne chapter 13—gave the naval captors full ownership of prizes after condemnation. To them, that meant the Mermaid’s crew and officers had the right to keep what they had seized and delivered to the agent.
The owners of the Joanna answered these points in a straightforward way. First, the law of nations had a long-standing rule: captured property does not become the enemy’s property unless it is taken “infra praesidia,” which is Latin for “inside the enemy’s strongholds,” such as a safe port. Before that point, friendly forces can retake the property and return it to the original owners. Second, money taken by force (the 26 guineas) and goods taken by force (the bales and casks) clearly fit this rule. Third, even the ransom money should go back, because it “stood in the shoes” of the ship and cargo—if the ship and cargo would have been restored on recapture, then the ransom that substituted for them should be restored too, so long as it was still in the enemy’s hands when the friendly capture happened. Fourth, the timing and the receipts pointed strongly to the same money being on board. Fifth, the statute about prize rights was not meant to take away the rights of British subjects to get back their own property that had been taken by the enemy and then retaken by the Royal Navy. The statute mainly fixed how naval crews would share prize values that used to belong to the Crown; it did not change the rule about returning recaptured British property to British owners.
There was another practical thread running through the courts’ thinking. Agreements made under the pressure of capture at sea are not the same as calm, equal bargains on land. People sign or pay to prevent a worse outcome—to save their ship, protect their crew, and avoid violence or loss. The law recognizes this context. It would be unfair if the enemy could keep ransom money simply because they grabbed it and happened to be holding it when caught, even though they had not brought it safely home. The point of the “infra praesidia” rule is to draw a clean, clear line everyone can understand: until the enemy brings the captured thing into their protected place, the original owner still has the stronger claim, and friendly forces can help undo the loss.
On July 8, 1715, the House of Lords gave its decision. It dismissed Captain Collier’s appeal and affirmed the Court of Session’s rulings. This final judgment settled the path of the case from start to finish: the capture of the Joanna by the Pontchartrain on May 17, 1711; the ransom payment on May 22; the capture of the privateer by HMS Mermaid on May 28; the condemnation of the privateer at Leith on June 12; the Court of Session’s holdings on February 13 and 16, 1713; and finally the House of Lords’ affirmation on July 8, 1715. The law’s message is easy to state: if an enemy captures your ship or your goods, they do not become the enemy’s property unless brought inside the enemy’s own strongholds. If friendly forces retake the property before that, it should be returned to you. And where the enemy is holding ransom money that stands in the place of your ship and cargo, that money, too, should be returned when the enemy is captured before reaching safety.
To make the ending crystal clear and detailed, here is what the final judgment means in natural terms. First, the 26 guineas taken from the Joanna’s master’s pocket were to be restored to the Scottish owners and master, because they were taken by force and never brought into a safe French port. Second, the four bales and two casks of goods taken out of the Joanna’s cargo were to be treated as still belonging to the owners at the moment the privateer was captured; even though those particular goods were later lost when the Greyhound sank under the prize agent’s care, the legal responsibility to account for their value ran back to the retaker who had charged the prize process with them while the owners had already started their claim. Third, the ransom sum of 200 guineas and £5 was also to be treated as the owners’ property, because the ransom money replaced the ship and cargo, and the enemy had not brought it into a safe harbor; it was found on the privateer at capture and so had to be returned. Fourth, the statute about prize shares for naval crews did not block these returns, because it did not convert British subjects’ reclaimed property into prize against them. Finally, the House of Lords closed the matter by affirming the Scottish court’s interlocutors and dismissing the appeal, leaving no doubt that the owners and master of the Joanna of Aberdeen were legally entitled to the money and goods recovered from the Pontchartrain after HMS Mermaid’s successful capture.
