Privateer

Definition

A privately-owned, armed vessel operating under a state-issued letter of marque against the shipping of a named enemy state. The privateer’s captain and crew shared the legal protection of state commission; their prizes were condemned through admiralty courts; they wore no uniform but operated as recognised auxiliaries of the issuing state’s naval power. The institution was the principal means by which the smaller European maritime states (and the colonial governments of larger ones) projected naval force in time of war during the period from the late sixteenth century through to the abolition of privateering by the 1856 Declaration of Paris.

The distinction between privateer and pirate was, in practice, often a question of perspective: the same captain operated as a privateer under his own state’s commission and as a pirate under the law of the state whose shipping he was taking. Francis Drake, Henry Morgan, Jean Lafitte, and Kanhoji Angre all stand at points along this continuum.