Privateering. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Great Britain, Spain, France, and other European powers augmented the power of their navies on the high seas by mobilizing businesspeople to fit out their own vessels as warships. Americans continued to dispatch such private warships during the
Revolutionary War and the
War of 1812. European and American officials supported privateering because it threatened enemy commerce inexpensively; European and American merchants sent out vessels, aboard which thousands of mariners served, in hopes of making patriotic windfall profits. American privateering expanded in each imperial conflict. As Britain's New World possessions matured into populous, prosperous provinces, privateering became America's leading contribution to Britain's war efforts. Disrupting an adversary's commerce continued to dominate American naval thinking well into the nineteenth century because of the prohibitive cost of building a battle fleet comparable to Britain's Royal Navy.
Privateering has often been confused with
piracy, but there were major differences between them. Privateering was a legal enterprise, conducted under state licenses called
letters of marque and reprisal; governments subjected it to increasing regulation as it grew in scope and importance. Piracy, on the other hand, was a capital crime that European states had largely eliminated by the early 1700s. There was also a substantial difference in the types of people who participated in each endeavor. Some of the most important merchants in Europe and America invested heavily in private men‐of‐war, whereas piracy principally attracted disgruntled sailors and other marginal people.
Privateering had played an important role in the founding of England's New World empire. The Caribbean exploits of John Hawkins and Francis Drake prompted interest in colonization among England's governing circles. Walter Raleigh partially financed his Roanoke settlement by privateering expeditions against the Spanish, and indeed selected the site because it seemed to offer an ideal privateering base. Similarly, in 1607, the Virginia Company employed a veteran privateering captain, Christopher Newport, to convey settlers to Jamestown.
Privateers operated within the political economy of mercantilism, which recognized the expansion or protection of a nation's trade as a legitimate purpose of war. Acquisitive impulses did not have to be suppressed, but could be harnessed to increase national wealth and inhibit the enemy's ability to wage war simultaneously. Hence the inability of Britain, Spain, and the other European powers—and later the United States—to afford the staggering expenditures necessary for powerful navies prompted the rise of privateering.
Large seaports dominated American privateering because only the major cities possessed the requisite resources. Privateering voyages required entrepreneurial ability, shipping, and manpower. Experienced merchants, men unafraid of risk and who commanded sufficient capital to acquire, arm, and victual a strong vessel, were as necessary to successful cruises as skilled captains, whose reputations could attract large crews. Once a privateer captured an enemy merchantman, the owners' business skills were again crucial, because no income was earned until the prize was condemned in a vice admiralty court and the vessel and cargo were sold at a profit. Business correspondents, warehouse facilities, and market information were all necessary for success.
In addition to business skills, shipping and manpower were also more available in the larger ports. Although some vessels were constructed specifically for privateering, most private men‐of‐war were converted merchant ships; thus, ports with substantial merchant fleets could dispatch more privateers than their smaller neighbors. Because privateers captured and did not sink their prey, large crews for boarding parties were essential, and the principal ports more easily supplied the necessary numbers of men. All these factors made Newport, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston centers of American privateering during the colonial and early national periods.
American privateers hunted the Atlantic from Newfoundland to the Spanish Main, but concentrated on the Caribbean, where the pickings were richest. American warships captured thousands of vessels, earning investors, captains, and crews substantial income; successful privateers generated profits of nearly 150 percent during the eighteenth century.
From the sixteenth century through the early 1800s, so long as naval fleets could not control wartime shipping lanes, privateering dominated Atlantic maritime conflict and exerted a major influence on commerce. Privateering disappeared only when steam power ended the age of fighting sail. Steam warships were simply too costly to be owned by private investors. Although the European powers signed a treaty ending privateering only in 1857 and a few private warships saw action in the American
Civil War, privateering largely ended at the conclusion of the War of 1812.
[See also
Confederate Navy;
Continental Navy;
Naval Militia;
Sea Warfare.]
Bibliography
Richard Pares , War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739–1763, 1936.
James G. Lydon , Pirates, Privateers, and Profits, 1970.
Gerome R. Garitee , The Republic's Private Navy: The American Privateering Business as Practiced by Baltimore During the War of 1812, 1977.
Kenneth R. Andrews , Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630, 1984.
David J. Starkey , British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century, 1990.
Carl E. Swanson , Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739–1748, 1991.
Carl E. Swanson
