Privateer
The words pirate and privateer are often tossed around as if they mean the same thing. Well, they do and they don’t. You could say that a pirate is not a pirate when he’s a privateer. We know what a pirate is. What’s a privateer?
A privateer was the name for a privately owned and armed vessel or its commander and crew, cruising under a commission from a government. The commission was called a letter of marque [and reprisal]. It licensed the privateer to capture or sink merchant vessels of an enemy nation. Privateers in some cases were authorized to keep for their own use whatever they seized from the enemy ships. The justification was that the privateer’s sponsor country was only getting even for the harm done to it by an enemy nation.
The custom of licensing private merchant ships to attack and raid enemy merchant ships during wartime seems to have begun back in the thirteenth century. It became more widespread during the reign of England’s King Henry VIII. His daughter, Elizabeth I (1533-1603), continued the practice, for she found it a cheap and easy way to supplement her Royal Navy, which was smaller than England’s privately owned merchant fleet.
In that time, merchant ships were built much like warships. They carried cannon, and their crews were trained to fight. Elizabeth could thus expand her sea power while profiting by privateer raids on enemy commerce and coastal cities and towns. By the time Elizabeth came to the throne in 1588, about 400 privateers were operating. During her reign, privateering spread rapidly, with sea captains winning fame and glory for their exploits. Of course the enemy regarded the privateer as a criminal. (Meltzer 16-7)
Privateers were sailors from one nation who had been given permission by their monarchs, contained in documents called letters of marque – also called letters of commission, or simply commissions – to attack and capture enemy ships. Licensed marauders of the seas, they ranged from pirates simply looking for a tissue of legal protection to men who thought of themselves first and foremost as patriot soldiers. A pirate had no commission; he usually attacked anyone and everyone he came upon, regardless of nationality, and he was hanged on sight if captured and given no protection as a prisoner of war. Privateers were supposed to share their “purchase” (treasure) with the nation they represented; the English owed 10 percent to the lord admiral and 6 to the king. Pirates kept what they stole. Privateering was invented by a cash-strapped Henry VIII of England, who had no navy to attack the French (it having been sold by Parliament to pay his debts); he came up with the idea of issuing commissions to three pirivate captains for the purpose of causing havoc with French shipping. Privateers were completely respectable; nobles often signed up when in a financial pinch. (Talty 35-6)