Neutral Fleet Locations?

[barbarossa2]

How can you tell how large a neutral fleet is when playing? Or where it is? I don't see any Danish fleet in my current game against the computer.

[Joram]

For neutrals, I'm afraid there is no listing of the fleet at any given moment.  You just have to hunt for it and hope it is not in your fog of war.  They can be quite energetic in their travels so I tend not to worry about it for neutrals.

[barbarossa2]

The reason I ask is because I may be interested in capturing them. I have no idea as to the size of the fleet. Or how I could capture it.

Is it so realistic to have such "energetic" fleets?

[Anthropoid]

I've noticed, starting up the 1792 scenario 3 or 4 times, and playing through about a year or so that, there tends to be quite a bit of naval activity in the early turns but it seems to drop off after that, and within a year or so a lot of the sea hexes which previously had merchants and pirates in them appear empty.
 
I have to sort of agree though that, some of the neutral fleet activities seem kinda pointless.

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

I have to sort of agree though that, some of the neutral fleet activities seem kinda pointless.

Part of their activity is probably to make it harder for England or France to capture them.

[Anthropoid]

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I find in detailed battles, I'm lucky if I can manage to capture one or two ships. How do you capture a whole FLEET!? Blockade the port and then capture the port by land? In that instance, a more or less total capture (with highly depleted strength) seems warranted, but being able to capture a province with a port, and automatically capturing any fleets--or for that matter capturing the capitaland automatically capturing all fleets does not seem entirely realistic. True, maybe a significant fraction of captains/crews would turn over their vessel, but maybe a significant fraction would turn them over to a rival or go rogue or something? Don't know the period well enough to know how it actually worked.