NAVAL PRIZE-MONEY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 21, 19 October 1918, Page 10

NAVAL PRIZE-MONEY

OLD ANOMALIES REMOVED IN NEW BRITISH BILL. (By Richard Thirkell in the "Daily ' _ Mail.") Prize-money was recently discussed by tho House of Commons, but it is surprising now many people, even there, do not appreciate the difference between this and prize bounty. Sir Bertram Falle, who represents our most important naval constituency, recently criticised a system by which men who fought and won a severe action in the North Sea would have to share their prize-money with others in safe waters thousands of miles away. In point of fact there is no such system. For a"' successful naval action prize bounty is awarded to tho victors ~-not prize-money—the former being at the rate of £5 a, head for those on board tho captured or destroyed enemy ship. When submarine 811 sank the Messoudieh in the Dardanelles, tho bounty of £3500, less expenses, was shared only among her crew of sixteen. Frize-monoy, which 'hae already reached a total of nearly ten millions sterling, is briefly described as tho,proceeds of the sale of captured enern;; property—ships and goods—and contraband. In the old days it went, like bounty, only to those actually making the capture", with the result that some snug fortunes were made on stations where there was little rifile of ssrious fighting. One of the most famous cases occurred in 1762, when the Active and Favourite captured the Spanish Hermione. The rich prize produoed £519,705 10s. ne't ; and the captains took £65,000 apiece and each seaman £484. The new Prize Bill aims at a more equitable distribution—after thfe warin a double sense. In the first place, everyone Will share who, in the course of the war, has put in a minimum of one month's sea service with the Navy or its auxiliaries. For a full share, thirty months' sea service is required if the war should last no longer than five years, and lesser periods will be treated proportionately. ' Lord Jellicoe, who led the Grand Fleet from the start of the war to the end of November, 1916, would thus be entitled to twenty-eight thirtieths of the full share of a Oomniander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet. The , wider distribution of the money is a recognition of the fact that a ship which, for instance, lays mines in the Kattegat or sweeps them up, in the Channel is doing work quite as useful as that of a vessel which discovers in a Swedish merchantman rubber destined for Germany.