> A friend of mine on the excellent MARHST-L (Maritime History) list posted a
> series of informative items about privateering during the War of 1812. Since
> many of us descend from families who might have engaged in such activites,
> but don't generally know where to find Maritime records , I thought it might be
> helpful to share these posts with you. Frank has given his kind permission .
> The later posts mention both ship names and people names. Hope you
> recognize someone...or, just enjoy a well written historical tidbit.....malinda
>
> Frank Pierce Young wrote:
>
> > The statement prompting this discussion concerned the effect of American
> > privateers upon the outcome of the War of 1812, it being averred that their
> > oft-storied turning it in American favour was a "myth".
> >
> > But first, for the benefit of any MARHSTers or pass-along readers unfamiliar
> > with that term -- and some apparently have been -- privateers are NOT
> > pirates. (Anyone knowing the difference may delete all this.) Thus a short
> > explanation of terms.   A privateer is a privately financed, owned,
> > outfitted, crewed, and operated armed vessel -- a private warship -- allowed
> > forth under government licence to attack the vessels of a declared national
> > enemy, for profit. Thus, unlike pirates, who are simply criminal, privateers
> > are quite legitimate. Also, their activity must cease with peace; anything
> > further indeed is piracy, and so recognised internationally.
> >
> > The profits, if any, derive not from sinking or other destruction, but from
> > capture of vessels and goods which may then be sold off. Customarily, all
> > concerned share in any monies. Likewise, all risks are entirely their own.
> > They were active out of most maritime nations at one time or other, and for
> > centuries. Typically, and certainly at the time of the War of 1812,
> > privateers were relatively small vessels vice many actual naval warships, and
> > compared to regular naval warships including any about their size, usually
> > relatively lightly armed -- but this was more than enough to overpower even
> > more lightly armed or unarmed merchantmen, which were their primary targets;
> > enemy warships as such were to be avoided. Known as Letters of Marque &
> > Reprisal, the right of the U.S. Congress to issue such private warship
> > licences is written into the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, para.
> > 11) -- though subsequent mid-19th Century international treaty agreements
> > made that moot long ago.
> >
> > Privateers always aimed at enemy merchant trade, because that's where risk
> > was least and any profits would lie. In short, they were ad hoc quasi-naval
> > raiders; and their licensing government's benefit, aside from no risk but a
> > usual share in any proceeds, was that they tended to draw off enemy warships
> > needed to protect enemy merchantmen while simultaneously slowly reducing
> > available enemy trading vessels and supplies (and hence enemy strength) while
> > raising their costs of same, even as captures enriched their captors, thus
> > encouraging still more privateering.
> >
> > The question of just Who-Is-A-Legitimate-Privateer lies behind much of the
> > modern labelling confusion, as does the matter of who is doing the talking.
> > Back in the early 1200s, a cunning and conscienceless character known as
> > Eustace the Monk became a virtual Capo di Capi of mafia-like sea raiders
> > working the English Channel/Bay of Biscay areas -- taking, of course,
> > primarily English merchantmen as well as anything else that looked good. He
> > got away with this for a long while because he and his men resided, hid out,
> > and spent liberally in French coastal ports and paid off all the right
> > people, whose vessels he (again, of course) never bothered, all at a period
> > when warfare between England and some French ruler or another was an
> > intermittent risk of everyday life. In that sense, Eustace might be
> > considered a sort of medieval privateer; but King John of England saw his
> > direct and very nasty threat to English sea trade as just plain old piracy,
> > and en fin cornered and captured him. A large tapestry at Cambridge
> > University shows him having his head lopped off on the rail of his own
> > vessel. The famous (or notorious; again, according to who tells the stories)
> > Francis Drake, better known to his usual Spanish victims and their
> > impoverished backers as El Draque (the dragon; a cute bilingual pun nobody
> > laughed at), never had a truly formal "licence", but assuredly went about
> > raiding Spanish trade with full if backdoor approval of Good Queen Bess, to
> > the considerable enlargement of her Tudor treasury. Which is how come he got
> > a "Sir" before his name at a great ceremony, which infuriated the Spanish
> > ambassador.
> >
> > Privateering may be gone, but the net concept remains. The raiding of
> > merchant traffic has characteristically come to be perceived as the style of
> > a weaker maritime Power vice a much stronger one, and the anticipated effect
> > of successful continued merchant traffic raiding on Britain, which depended
> > almost totally upon it, lay directly behind the sly raiding efforts of
> > Imperial Germany in WWI (especially the famous SEEADLER, an armed sailing
> > barque skippered by the humorous Kapitan u. Graf Felix Von Luckner) -- and
> > especially the long-planned one of Nazi Germany in WWII, in arming and
> > sending out numerous disguised merchantmen as naval raiders worldwide to
> > attack Allied merchantmen. Some were quite successful indeed, especially
> > early on, in wreaking havoc, especially on British trade, and tying up
> > numerous RN warships in often goosechase hunting expeditions.
> >
> > Other MARHSTers will likely have far more detail to offer on the nature of
> > privateering. It and those involved in it, and how they came to do so and why
> > and with what, is a fascinating maritime topic of itself and as said involved
> > most maritime nations, especially Atlantic ones from the mid-1600s on.
> >
> > In my next posting I'll get into that business of American privateers in the
> > War of 1812, and what they wrought.
> >
> > FRANK PIERCE YOUNG
> > Annapolis, MD                 [log in to unmask]

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