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American Privateering

During the American Revolution and again in the heyday of privateering in the War of 1812 private American vessels commissioned with Letters of Marque and Reprisal amassed fortunes in prize money raiding English merchant shipping. The privateers were far more successful than the regular American Navy in disrupting English commerce. Secessionist Southern privateers also vexed Union shipping during the American Civil War, though to less effect. Privateering effectively ended in the 19th Century--although an American blimp was commissioned with a Letter of Marque in the early days of World War II.

Privateers versus Pirates
Privateering was considered an honorable calling combining patriotism and profits--at least by the privateers and the governments who issued their commissions. A pirate in contrast was simply a seagoing outlaw, a plundering killer; if caught pirates were hanged. The line between a privateer and pirate at times was stretched admittedly thin. New Orleans' infamous Laffitte brothers used whatever flag of convenience and Letter of Marque they could find. the Laffites sailed under the Texas national flag and a Texas Letter of Marque during the short period Texas was an independent country; when that pretext was lost, they bribed officials in Latin American banana republics for Letters of Marque as an excuse to continue to raid Spanish shipping in the Carribbean. Likewise, not every government recognized even outwardly legitimate commissions. During the American Revolution England refused to acknowledge America as a separate country; {notable leaders such as Sam Adams and Thomas Jefferson were in the English view simply treasonous rebells and if caught would have been hanged} thus American privateers bore the commission of no legitimate government as far as the English were concerned--they were pirates, and if captured to be treated as such.

Legal Background for American Privateering
The Letter of Marque and Reprisal originated in international law in the necessity of self-defense on the high seas. Marque is an old French word connoting a boundary, and Reprisal meant retaliation. By Letter of Marque a government designated particular captains or masters of a named vessel to raid a stated enemy's shipping; he could not go outside these bounds, as an act of "reprisal" for the enemy's similar depredations. They were essentially naval auxiliaries, an instant navy made out of merchant shipping at a time when most national governments did not maintain a navy and so could be caught wanting when hostilities commenced. Captured privateersmen were entitled to dignified treatment as prisoners of war. The privateer had to be avoid attacking friendly or neutral vessels, a restriction vastly complicated by the common use of false flags at sea as a ruse de guerre. The privateer was also bound to the civil treatment even of their enemies. The brutality of cannon, cutlass and boarding pike in the initial attack notwithstanding, once a vessel was taken, wanton cruelty, torture, or pointless destruction might forfeit the prize.

Upon capturing a vessel, the privateer manned it with a prize crew, who sailed it either to a home port or the ports of a friendly neutral country. There Admiralty Courts took charge of the vessel and its cargo, and opened a hearing into the circumstances of its capture. By convention, the baggage and personal effects of passengers were to be spared and returned to them (though in practice some looting was nevitable). The captured vessel itself and its cargo were a lawful prize if the privateer could prove that the ship flew an enemy flag, or carried enemy cargo, and that the privateer had not transgressed the normal usages of war in her capture.

Once the court condemned a vessel and cargo as a lawful prize, they were sold, most often at public auction. The court deducted costs and attorneys fees (privateering cases were by the most lucrative for American Revolutionary lawyers like John Adams) and turned over the rest to the ship's agent, who divided the money according to percentages established in the ship's articles. Usually the division was 1/3 to the owners, and the remaining 2/3 split among Captain and crew, with everybody down to the cabin boy receiving at least a little share. As an example--

In America, the hastily organized governments of the original thirteen colonies suddenly independent states, granted letters of Marque and Reprisal to Captains out of their own ports. Later the Continental Congress took over this responsibility, which was written into both the Articles of Confederation and later the U.S Constution. Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution still empowers Congress to "grant letters of Marque and Reprisal," though Congress has not done so (as of this writing) for at least fifty years.

Privateering in Practice: Privateers and Letter of Marque Traders
Virtually all merchant vessels of the time were armed, and it was comparatively easy for a privateer captain to attract a crew: he need only put an ad in the paper and adventurous seamen eager for prize money swarmed the recuitment table. Privateeering was so attractive that the U.S. Navy found it could not compete.

Most privateering vessels were topsail schooners armed with x cannon, y, and z, though some were ships as large as brigs and brigantines, and others were smaller sloops, even rowed gunboats. The privateer armed the vessels with kegs of gunpaowder, rations for teh men--as many as 150 crowded into a seventy-foot schooner. Overwhelming numbers were useful in the favored technique of grappling, which meant deliberatly colliding with a vessel, lashing her fast, and then sending swarms of sailors over her rail armed with cutlasses, knives and boarding pikes to take her. This was preferred to a cannon duel at long range which put too many holes in valuable vessels and too often sank them.

Maritime historian Geofrey Footner posits a difference between the dedicated privateer and the Letter-of-Marque trader. The former cruised exclusively for prizes, while the latter sailed its normal trade route to pick up and deliver cargo, and only took a prize if the opportunity arose. The seas were crowded with sail, as many then on the trade routes as there are trucks on a highway today, and opportunites and risks abounded.

Early history--Colonial Privateering
Colonial private vessels from American ports commissioned with English Letters of Marque and Reprisal sailed against French or Spanish advevaries from the earliest days of colonization. The first trully American privateers, however, sailed with commisions from the newly created states of Maryland, Virginia, Massachusettes and New York when hostilities with Enlgand flared into an open rebellion in the mid 1770's. After the Continental Congress began forming a national government to unify the former colonies,  Congress took upon itself the task of issuing letters of Marque and Reprisal.

The American Revolution
By 1777 “[t]he activity of privateers had produced in the adjudications of prizes a number of highly remunerative legal cases; some of [John] Adams' former law students had grown richer in two years than he had in seventeen.” Page Smith, John Adams (New York: Doubleday & Co. 1962)(Smith: John Adams)  Vol. 1.(1725-1784) at p. 348.

Some sailed under Letterrs of Marque issued by the states; John Paul Jones saied in Drake under a commission from Congress, arrived in Brest, Fracne with a 'captured shhip fot eh BIrtish navy." He drew a bill fo echnge for 24,000 livres to be distrubuted mong his officer as reward for capturing the vessel; the Paris commisoners had to disallow it as byond their authority.  Page Smith, John Adams at Vol. 1 391-2.  Adams colained that "the sale of prizes brought into French ports by American capatins were so slow, surrounded by so much red tape, and subject to such heavy damages that it hardly semd worth while for privateers or American vesels to cruise in European waters."  Page Smith, John Adams at Vol. 1 393.

Jeremiah Yellott as a privateer founded a major fortune during the American Revolution, becoming one of the wealthiest citizens of the prosperous city of Baltimore. <ref. Jeremiah Yellott--Revolutionary War Privateersman and Baltimore Philanthhopist, Maryland Historical Magazine Vo. 86 Dummer 1991 (176-185)(Yellott, J.)

The Quasi-War with France
Without French aid it is very doubtful America could have won the Revolutionary War. French gunpowder and cannon and cloth supported Washington's army; French loans to America bankrupted her own economony; about half the soldiers and all of the vessels that bottled up Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown that finished the English were French. So the French were understandably perturbed when after the Revolution America fell back into her old habits of trafficing with England. When during the French Revolution in the 1790's (largely sparked by the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson) England declared war against France America not only failed to support France, but   looked like she might abandon neutrality and side with England. As a warning, as a rebuke, and also because she was desperate for cargoe slike Ameican flour, French vessels began harassing American shipping. The Americans were neutral, so France had to use the pretext that they wre carrying contraband English cargoes.

The French resorted to trickery. . .etc.. As a result, many French prize court decisons were invald, resulting in massive and continued international litigation. The US Congress initially established the U.S. Claims Court as a venue to decide leftover claims from invalid French prize proceedings during the Quasi War, more than 80 years earlier, and the Court was still sorting through them as late as 1916.

The Decline of Privateering
By the Treaty of Paris of ?which ended the Crimean War, most European nations agreed to cease issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and privateering effectively ceased at that point. The UNtied Stats, however never signed the treaty, in theory could still commission privateers, and in fact did so in a least one instance at the outset of World War II

Privateering Briefly Resurrected in World War II
After Pearl Harbor, with much of the US Fleet sunk and the Japanese dominant in the Pacific, the Goodyear Blimp Company armed one of its blimps with a rifle, and applied for and received a Letter of Marque and Reprisal from the U.S. Navy to sail against Japanese submarines. There are no reports of prizes taken by the blimp.

Privateering Today
American privateering has been in abeyance in the various conflicts since World War II, though the Constitution still technically allows Congress to grant Letttrs of Marque and Reprisal. Occassionally legal issues having to do with taking of prizes on the high seas do recur. When the United Nations imposed an embargo on the sale of Iraqi oil, Iraq's dictator the late Saddam Hussein  frequently cheated the embargo using various subterfuges to smuggle oil onto outgoing tankers, and sell Iraqi oil for his own account. When one such vessel was captured there was some confusion about what legal rules justified confiscating the cargo of oil; the confusion was resolved by referral to the Admiralty rules related to privateering captures.

For More Information
Jerome R. Garitee, The Republic's Private Navy (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press 1998) p. 158

Ernest McNeil Eller, ed., Chesapeake Bay in the American Revolution (Centerville, Md.: Tidewater Publishers, 1981)

Frederick c. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea (Washington D.C, U.S. NAval INstitute PRess, 1936)

Instructions to Commanders of Private Ships or Vessels of War, in Worthing Chauncey Ford, ed., Journals of teh Contintntal Congres, 1774-1789 (13 vols., Washington D.C., Gov't Printing Office, 1905-1937)

Slaves were treated as prizes, to be sold with the vessel and its cargo unless their former owneer paid salvage for them. ,ref> Jeremiah Yellott at n. 15.