privateer

privateer, a privately owned vessel armed with guns which operated in time of war against the trade of an enemy. The name came to embrace both the ships and the men who sailed in them, with the practice, known as guerre de course, becoming accepted in international maritime law. Such vessels were commissioned by letters of marque, which licensed them to take prizes in time of war, and which served as both official letters of reprisal and bonds of good behaviour. The first letter of marque was issued in England in 1293, but only from 1589 did they provide for prizes to be condemned at an Admiralty Court and a division of their value made between the crown and the owners. The division was usually on the basis of 10% to the crown and 90% to the owner.

In English history the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) was the golden age of privateering, though it continued long after that to be a profitable business. Francis Drake was essentially a privateer on his voyage round the world even though he did not have a letter of marque for the voyage, as also was John Paul Jones two centuries later before he became a regular naval officer. By the time that national navies were established on a permanent basis, the authorities often disapproved of privateering because it drained off the best seamen. But it was such an efficient method of commerce destruction that the French, notably Jean Bart and François Thurot, and the Americans, made great use of it, to such an extent that all other nations were more or less forced to follow suit. In this way privateers may perhaps be considered as the strategic predecessors of submarines, when used, as in the First and Second World Wars, in operations against the merchant shipping of an enemy state.

One of the most successful British privateers was Woodes Rogers (d. 1732). He was engaged by a syndicate of merchants during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13) to lead an expedition under a letter of marque to the South Seas in the ships Duke and Duchess, described in his journal as frigates of 20 and 26 guns respectively. With Rogers in the Duke was William Dampier, who served as navigator of the expedition. They sailed from Bristol in 1708, took a few prizes in the voyage south to Cape Horn, and eventually arrived at the island of Juan Fernandez where they chanced upon Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned there four years earlier. The two ships then captured a Spanish galleon off the coast of Mexico, and took aboard its precious cargo of bullion, silk, and precious stones. Rogers, who had been wounded in the battle, then sailed his ships across the Pacific to Guam before returning for England via the Cape of Good Hope. The prize goods taken during the voyage were sold for the considerable sum of £148,000 and Rogers wrote an entertaining account of his circumnavigation in A Cruising Voyage round the World (1712). From 1718 until his death he was governor of the Bahamas with a mandate to stamp out piracy.

George Shelvocke was another successful privateer in the South Seas, though some of his activities were closer to piracy. It was, incidentally, a passage from Shelvocke's book, A Voyage round the World (1726), which almost certainly inspired Coleridge to write ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. French privateers were most active in the century following the War of the Spanish Succession, and American privateers were far more numerous than naval ships in the War of American Independence (1775–82), and the War of 1812–14. Privateering was abolished by the Declaration of Paris in 1856. However, the USA refused to sign the declaration. As a result it suffered severely from this form of war against its trade throughout its Civil War of 1861–5 when both sides preferred to arm merchantmen as regular warships than to commission privateers.

The principles of the Declaration of Paris were reaffirmed at the Hague Convention of 1907. However, a form of guerre de course was approved there when a majority of the maritime nations endorsed the use of armed merchant cruisers, and in the two world wars waged during the 20th century, maritime attack on trade proved a major weapon.

See also corsair.