What Was a "Ransom Bond" ?

[Llewellyn]

When reading about the activities of Confederate commerce raiders, Alabama and Shenandoah for example, I come across frequent references to captured Union ships being either burned or released on a Ransom Bond.

Can anybody explain just what ransom bonds were, and how they worked ? Who or what was bound - how the bond was enforced . . . and so on.

Thank you.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Essentially, it was a legal document that required the ship's owners to pay the value of the ship to the Confederate government after the CSA won the war. The United States did not recognize their legality.

 

[Peace Society]

Bonded

On June 27, 1865 the Shenandoah comes up on a group of eleven whaling ships in the Bering Sea. She lowers her smokestack and reduces her sail to keep behind the group. The next day they are all becalmed in East Cape Bay. Lt. James Waddell enters with a full head of steam and flying the American flag. He arms his five boats, raises the Confederate flag, and takes possession of the fleet. He burns nine and bonds two, consuming a half million dollars of Yankee property. A week before, he had heard the war was over, but not having printed evidence, continued his "cruise of destruction".

One of the ships bonded is the James Maury. Lt. Waddell records: I had heard of the whale ship James Maury when at the island of Ascension, and after reaching the Arctic Ocean heard again of her, and also of the death of her captain, whose widow and two little children were on board. … The boarding officer of the James Maury, Lt. Chew, sent her mate to me, who represented the widow to be in a very distressed condition with her two little children; that she was very sad, and that the remains of her husband were preserved in a cask of whisky. I sent a message to the unhappy woman to cheer up; that no harm should come to her or the vessel; that I knew she was an owner in the vessel, and that the men of the South never made war on helpless women and children.

O.R. Navies, ser. 1, vol. 3
Quoted in D**n the Torpedoes! Naval Incidents of the Civil War
A.A Hoehling, 1989, Gramercy Books/Random House, NY, p. 180-1