Here was an opportunity of making a fortune

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 289.

Privateers also had little interest in taking prisoners so often simply released them. In August 1813 Congress authorized a bounty of $25 for each prisoner brought in by privateers and in March 1814 increased it to $100, but still the fact was that American privateers were rapidly shifting the prisoner balance in Britain’s favor because any privateer that kept at it long enough was almost sure to wind up in enemy hands. Of forty-one privateers that sailed from Salem only fifteen remained uncaptured by the end of the war.

Still, the chance of hitting the jackpot kept owners and men, or at least a certain kind of men, coming. It cost about $40,000 to purchase and fit out a typical privateer schooner and a single lucky prize—like a West Indiaman laden with coffee, sugar, or rum—could clear $100,000, even after deducting a long list of fees and court costs that went to attorneys and prize agents and auctioneers and owners of the wharves and warehouses that stored the captured ships and cargoes while awaiting adjudication. The usual arrangement was that half the spoils went to the owners and the other half was divided among the the officers and crew in proportion to their rank: one share for a landsman, two shares for an able-bodied seaman, up to sixteen for the captain.

"Here was an opportunity of making a fortune,” remarked George Little, a merchant sailor who entered on board the small privateer schooner George Washington when he found himself stranded and moneyless in Norfolk soon after the start of the war. “But then it was counterbalanced by the possibility of getting my head knocked off, or a chance of being thrown into prison for two or three years.” On a typical good cruise an able seaman might stand to earn $300 in prize money for three months’ work, three or four times the going wage for an ordinary seaman on a merchant ship. On an exceptionally good cruise he could literally make thousands: a single prize that the Yankee took, the San Jose Indiano, sailing from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro filled with silks and other valuable cargo, sold for half a million dollars when she was brought into Portland, Maine, bringing the captain $15,789.69 and even the ship’s two black cabin boys, the lowest men on the totem pole, $1,121.88 and $738.19.