MERCHANT SHIPS, ARMED

This chapter describes the concept of armed merchant ships. Merchant ship is a lawful aim in sea warfare and belligerents, depending on uninterrupted maritime transport for their existence, will try to protect such transport by any necessary means, including the arming of merchant ships. By simply being armed, a merchant ship is not transformed into an auxiliary cruiser; it retains prima facie its non-combatant status. Merchant ships had no legal duty to submit to visit and search by enemy warships because these are steps towards capture, and capture of enemy merchantmen is not a right but a hostile act. Until the end of the Napoleonic wars, merchantmen were primarily armed against pirates and privateers. Thereafter two developments converged, firstly, privatizing was abandoned and piracy suppressed. Secondly, the improvement in both offensive armament and defensive armor-plating gave surface warships such overwhelming military power that a rule could develop which protected merchant ships from attack without warning. As a result, the arming of merchant ships gradually fell into disuse without ever being formally abolished.