Of naval courts martial and prize claims: Some legal consequences of Commodore Johnstone's secret mission to the Cape of Good Hope and the "battle" of Saldanha Bay, 1781 (Part 2)

Jp Van Niekerk

doi:10.17159/2411-7870/2016/v22n1a7

Abstract

Commodore Johnstone's secret mission to the Cape of Good Hope in 1781 had a surprisingly large number of legal consequences, not only in England but also at the Cape. In the main they concerned two matters, namely naval law, more specifically intra-naval immunity, and prize law, more specifically, the question of joint captures.

Highlights

284 Harlow 1952: 110 observes that “prize and plunder seem to have been uppermost in his mind during and after the expedition to the Cape”; Rutherford 1942: 308 remarks that “[h]e still seems to have regarded his task from a privateering point of view and to have been obsessed by the thought of prizes to a degree remarkable even in an admiral of the period when important issues were at stake”
The Admiralty Court determined the validity of the capture in terms of international law – the law of war – and declared the prize either lawful or unlawful
The Court rejected their first and second arguments, namely that the naval vessels were not the sole captors as the Saldanha Bay prizes were taken by a joint service, and that the Navy did not obtain any rights under the [Dutch] Prize Act, 1781

Summary

Introduction

As recounted earlier,375 the commanders of the Dutch Indiamen captured by the British in Saldanha Bay – Gerrit Harmeier of the Hoogkarspel, who was the flag officer of the return fleet, Alex Landt of the Honkoop, Dirk Corneliszoon Plokker of the Paarl, and Hendrik Steedsel of the Dankbaarheid – and of the one that had been destroyed there before she could be captured – Justus van Gennep of the Middelburg – arrived back in Cape Town where they tried to explain to the local authorities what had happened. 407 See Jeffreys Kaapse Archiefstukken 1782 Deel 1: 294 (Council of Policy Resolution, 10 Dec 1782, referring to his request to depart “tot voortsetting van het Appel door hem geinterjecteerd, op ende jeegens Seeker vonnis, bij den raad van Justitie deeses Gouvernements, ten laste van hem supp’lt geveld”) He subsequently received more specific permission to depart for Batavia on the Prussian ship Berlin: see idem 1783 Deel 1: 18 (Council of Policy Resolution, 28 Jan 1783). Van Gennep returned to the Netherlands in 1786 and died in Rotterdam in 1801.425

Epilogue