I can't vouch for the accuracy of that figure, but if it's correct, that suggests that those wily New Englanders were just as adept at "godfathering" their ships to a foreign flag as Southerners were. It's a legal sleight-of-hand, rather than a substantive change of ownership.
Actually the substantive change of ownership was very important. The
Alabama and the other raiders burned many ships which tried the legal-trick means of changing ownership, and most countries had fairly strict laws about the requirements.
Ships destroyed
'At half-past eleven A. M., "sail ho!" was cried from the mast, and about one P. M., we came up with an exceedingly American-looking ship, which, upon being hove to by a gun, hoisted the English colors... The register purported that the stranger was the British ship
Martaban, belonging to parties in Maulmain, a rice port in India. Manifest and clearance corresponded with the register; the ship being laden with rice, and having cleared for Singapore- of which port, as the reader sees, she was within a few hours' sail. Thus far, all seemed regular and honest enough, but the ship was American- having been formerly known as the
Texan Star-and her transfer to British owners, if made at all, had been made within the last ten days, after the arrival of the
Alabama in these seas had become known at Maulmain...
'every line of the ship was American... Passing up the side, I stepped upon deck. Here everything was, if possible, still more American, even to the black, greasy cook, who, with his uncovered woolly head, naked breast, and uprolled sleeves in the broiling sun, was peeling his Irish potatoes for his codfish... In the person of the master, the long, lean, angular-featured, hide-bound, weather-tanned Yankee skipper stood before me. Puritan,
May-Flower, Plymouth Rock, were all written upon the well-known features. No amount of English custom-house paper, or sealing-wax could, by any possibility, convert him into that rotund, florid, jocund Briton who personates the English shipmaster. His speech was even more national- taking New England to be the Yankee
nation- than his person; and when he opened his mouth, a mere novice might have sworn that he was from the "State of Maine" -there, or thereabouts. When he told me that I "hadn't-ought-to" burn his ship, he pronounced the shibboleth which condemned her to the flames.
'The shrift was a short one. When the papers were produced, I found among them no bill of sale or other evidence of the transfer of the property--the register of an English ship, as every seaman knows, not being such evidence... In half an hour, or as soon as the crew could pack their duds, and be transferred to the
Alabama, the
Texan Star- alias the
Martaban- was in flames; the beautiful, new English ensign being marked with the day, and latitude and longitude of the capture, and stowed away carefully by the old signal-quartermaster, in the bag containing his Yankee flags.' (
p.717-9)
Ships saved:
'The next vessel that we overhauled was a "converted" ship--that is, a Yankee turned into an Englishman. I desired very much to burn her, but was prevented by the regularity of her papers and the circumstances surrounding her. She was a Maine-built ship, but had evidently been
bona fide transferred, as her master and crew were all Englishmen' (
p.625)
'another American ship passed us, but she proved, upon being boarded, to have been sold, by her patriotic Yankee owners, to an Englishman, and was now profitably engaged in assisting the other ships of John Bull in taking away from the enemy his carrying-trade. I examined the papers and surroundings of all these ships, with great care, being anxious, if possible, to find a peg on which I might hang a doubt large enough to enable me to burn them. But, thus far, all the transfers had been
bona fide. In the present instance, the papers were evidently genuine, and there was a Scotch master and English crew on board.' (
pp.631-2)
'On the afternoon after leaving the Strait of Malacca, we overhauled another American ship under neutral colors--the Bremen ship
Ottone. The transfer had been made at Bremen, in the previous May; the papers were genuine, and the master and crew all Dutchmen, there being no Yankee on board. The change of property, in this case, having every appearance of being
bona fide, I permitted the ship to pass on her voyage' (
p.722)
From Chelyabinsk's look into the subject:
In this era, the concept of limited liability is still very much in its infancy. Most ships are owned by a single person or by a partnership, and they own them in their own right and not as an agent or director of a corporate entity. When the ship suffers losses, the owner or the partnership becomes personally liable for those losses. Take the case of Zachariah Pearson, for instance. Pearson was a shipping magnate who branched out into blockade running, and suffers a series of serious losses as a result. Nowadays, Pearson's liability would be limited to his capital in 'ZCP Blockade Busters Ltd'; despite the failure, he could have shrugged his shoulders and gone on with his life. Back then, when Pearson's business capital wasn't enough to pay his debtors, his own property was seized and sold to raise the funds.
This also has repercussions for the way we understand trading in multiple companies. The free movement of global capital means that nowadays you can set up a local limited company in a particular territory and run your operations through that. However, we're in an era here where trading entities are, for the most part, individuals rather than companies. Notice that in the
case of the Baltica the way in which the ship was to be transferred was not through the creation of a local subsidiary, but by Mr Sorensen junior occupying property at Altona and Hamburg and being admitted as a burgher. So the idea of somehow disguising the ownership of vessels behind a series of corporate firewalls is basically impossible: it simply doesn't work that way.
This is also why talking about the American Civil War seeing a 'flight from the flag' is really misleading. It implies that owners, masters, vessels and crews transferred their allegiance
en masse from the Union to the United Kingdom- 'flying' from one flag to another to find greater security. It also implies that, if Britain had not been there to accept the vessels, those owners, masters, vessels and crews could have gone to any other country's flag without any greater difficulty than they encountered historically. However, even the most cursory study of British trade policy between the repeal of the Corn Laws and the 1906 election's focus on Tariff Reform will show that Britain is exceptional in its openness during this period. It's exceptional even in comparison to the United States, whose legislation on foreign merchant vessels and tariffs are both far more closed than the British equivalents.
There are a number of reasons that countries would not be welcoming to a sudden influx of foreign merchant vessels... Some countries ban ships built in foreign countries from their registry, because they want to preserve their own shipbuilding industry. Some countries ban foreign owners, on the grounds that they want their own trade to enrich their own subjects. Others ban foreign crews, to preserve their merchant sailors to man ships in wartime. Having a vast merchant marine requires you to invest in a navy sufficient to protect it in both war and peace, a cost which many countries are either unable or unwilling to pay. Furthermore, they are unlikely to have any interest in protecting Union merchant ships... when that risks the same merchant ships transferring back once the war is over. The reason that the standard for ship registry detailed above are so high is to ensure that the only merchants these neutral nations have to protect are unquestionably their own.
Furthermore, what we see is not a 'flight from the flag'. It's actually a fire sale of Union merchant ships, whose owners can no longer ply their trade profitably, and who are trying to cut their losses by selling off their assets. Notice that all the ships described above have functionally lost their American identity: owner, masters and crew are all different. It's the equivalent of a high street chain buying the stores of a bankrupt rival.