A prize crew is the selected members of a ship chosen to take over the operations of a captured ship.
[1] In the Age of Sail and up into the American Civil War, capturing enemy ships was quite common.
As a result, warships optimistically carried extra crew members for use as prize crews.
[citation needed] More recently, as evidenced by results of sea battles during World War I and World War II, ships generally were sunk, not captured.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.