There was a Mediterranean tune that went like this:
What the sea tells you, carve it into your heart until your soul returns to harbor.
In the story of the Iliad, the unpleasantness between Achilles and Agamemnon over "spoils of war" was ultimately temporarily resolved by war.
Helen was different from Apollo's sacrificial daughter. The latter could be dealt with by a "citizens' assembly," while the former was an international issue, one for which there was no avenue of negotiation in that era.
Looking back, quite a few things happened in 1756. That year, France and Austria formed an alliance, while Britain took advantage of the chaos on the European continent, when it had no time to manage its colonies, and engaged in extensive "fishing" under the Rule of 1756.
This originated from a rule of Roman Law: captors had to place captured property within the defensive perimeter of the Roman camp, putting it under their own protection. The same rule could also be applied to naval warfare.
If captured goods could be "recovered," ownership of those spoils did not necessarily belong to the captor. It was like a sheep carried off by a wolf. As long as its owner could retrieve it, it still belonged to its original owner.
Naturally, this process could not avoid "conflict." Armed merchant convoys became far less common after the eighteenth century, mainly due to the impact of the Portland War. The British side had used warships in that conflict, while the Dutch fleet had used merchant vessels "capable of fighting."
So if the original owner could not recover the sheep carried away by the wolf, was that simply the end of it?
In principle, they could bring a case before a prize court, which would decide whether a ship or its cargo counted