A licence to attack
A privateer was a privately owned armed ship whose owners held a government licence to attack the shipping of an enemy. The licence was known as a letter of marque, often in the longer form “letters of marque and reprisal”. The word “marque” is related to an old term for seizure or reprisal, and the practice grew out of medieval custom in which a person wronged by foreign subjects could ask their own ruler for permission to seek compensation by seizing foreign goods.
By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the system was used mainly in wartime. A state that lacked a large navy could add to its fighting strength cheaply, since the investors paid for the ship and crew, and the government shared in the proceeds. For the owners, privateering was a business venture with the possibility of profit and a real risk of loss.
Privateer or pirate
The legal difference between a privateer and a pirate mattered a great deal. A privateer acted under a commission, was supposed to attack only vessels of nations at war with its own, and had to bring captured ships to a court for judgement. A pirate acted on no one’s authority and attacked anyone. In practice the line could blur. Captains sometimes exceeded their instructions, seized neutral ships, or carried on after peace had been declared. Their crews could be treated as pirates when they were caught. Some of the better-known pirate vessels and their crews began their careers as privateers.
Prize courts and the share system
Capturing a ship was only the first step. A captured vessel and cargo, called a prize, was generally sent to a port where an admiralty or prize court would decide whether the capture was lawful. If it was, the ship and cargo were sold and the proceeds divided. Typically, the crown or state took a share, the owners took another, and the crew divided the remainder according to rank, though the exact proportions differed from place to place and from period to period.
This system gave crews a strong incentive to capture rather than to sink. It also created disputes, since a court could rule a capture unlawful, for instance if the ship belonged to a neutral. Owners were sometimes required to post a bond as a guarantee that they would follow the rules.
Famous eras of privateering
Privateering appears throughout early modern history. Under Elizabeth I, English captains such as Sir Francis Drake operated under a mix of royal permission and private investment against Spanish shipping, including the treasure fleet galleons that carried silver from the Americas. During the wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch, English and French all licensed large numbers of privateers.
The French used privateers heavily in the guerre de course, or war on trade, against British shipping. One famous French figure was Robert Surcouf, who operated in the Indian Ocean around the turn of the nineteenth century. British merchants responded with convoys, naval escorts and, sometimes, their own letters of marque, so that merchant ships carried guns and could capture an enemy vessel if the opportunity arose.
In North America, privateers played a part in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. The US Constitution even lists, among the powers of Congress, the authority to grant letters of marque and reprisal. Such vessels, often fast schooners, damaged British trade although their overall impact is debated, and many were captured.
Why privateering ended
States grew uneasy with the practice for several reasons. Large, permanent navies reduced the need for private help. Privateers were hard to control and could provoke disputes with neutral countries. And as global trade expanded, governments came to see the protection of commerce as more valuable than its disruption.
After the Crimean War, the Declaration of Paris of 1856 set out maritime rules, including an agreement among its signatories to abolish privateering. Not every state signed. The United States did not, partly because it relied on a small navy and wanted to retain the option, and during the American Civil War both sides made use of ships acting under some form of commission, with the Confederacy issuing letters of marque. Over the following decades the practice died out as the major powers’ navies grew.
Legacy
Privateering sits between state power and private enterprise, and it shaped both naval warfare and maritime law. Ideas about prize law, neutral rights and the treatment of captured crews all developed in part through disputes over privateers. The practice also influenced how states thought about arming merchant ships. In the First World War, for instance, navies requisitioned or armed merchant vessels, but under direct naval control rather than as independent commercial ventures. The core question, how much of a nation’s maritime violence should be in private hands, was largely settled in favour of the state.