From This Side of the Pond 13: Letters of Marque
I've written about this project before. From now the essays which are written will be posted here and, as soon as I have a suitable space worked out, I'll be recording the essays.
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Warships became a pre-eminent way to display and employ military force from the time it became possible to load multiple manoeuvrable cannons on multiple decks. Though the age of the capital battleship came to an end with World War Two, navies are still used as a demonstration of will and power - think of a US carrier group arriving in the Gulf or transiting the South China Sea.
And the importance of vessels capable of carrying a nation’s force into the oceans is reflected in the ages of sea-faring nations navies. The Spanish Navy predates what we would think of as Spain today. Britain’s Royal Navy as a deliberate standing force dates from fifteen-forty-six, though less organised English navies date back to the twelfth century. In France, Cardinal Richelieu founded the French Navy in sixteen-twenty-four and oversaw it’s running until his death nineteen years later.
America’s Navy had a start in the Revolutionary War but did not get going as a continuous armed service until seventeen-ninety-four, though now it is the world’s most powerful navy by some factor.
Of course, as with any standing armed service, a navy is expensive - building, staffing, and maintaining the ships and infrastructure which supports them requires huge sums.
In times past there was a less expensive way to project force into the ocean. A government could grant Letters of Marque, which enabled a privately owned ship to engage in acts of war. The term goes back to the fourteenth century and the reign of England’s King Edward the Third. It refers to a licence granted by the Crown to a subject so they could make reprisals against a hostile state for injuries endured.
While the concept was around in the fourteenth century it was another two hundred years before their use really took off. Bringing spices from India, or looted gold from South America was profitable, but plundering the ships carrying that wealth was easier and required less manpower and upfront costs.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth century England, amongst others, used ships sailing under Letters of Marque to harry Spain, the major sea power of the time. They were used less as a way of avenging wrongs, as originally purposed, and more like state sanctioned piracy.
In the eighteenth-century Britain rose in power and now its ships carried the wealth of the world in their holds: Tobacco, sugar and cotton from the Caribbean and American colonies; tea, silver and spices from India and China. Everything, from everywhere, including slaves from Africa. And now, Britain felt the bite of sanctioned piracy.
Adding to the French Corsairs of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century there later came a new threat. While the thirteen colonies remained under British control, the Royal Navy protected the merchantmen which flowed between the old and new worlds.
With the fight for independence those same ships became valid targets for capture and as mentioned earlier, although a Continental Navy was formed, it had no hope of matching the mightiest sea-power of its age. Sixty-five ships served in the Continental Navy, and the eleven which survived the war were sold off.
How, then, did somewhere around six-hundred British ships come to be captured or destroyed during the figth for independence?
On March twenty-third seventeen-seventy-six the Continental Congress formalized the process of granting Letters of Marque and it is estimated that some seventeen-hundred were granted, covering about eight-hundred ships.
While ships sometimes worked together these were the original battling business units, each out on the ocean with the express intention of capturing ships and profiting from them. They were uninterested in Britain’s warships; no they wanted the merchants with holds full of goods. The disruption they wrought led to discussions in London as to what priorities the Royal Navy should have. With insurance premiums skyrocketing merchants wanted more protection, at the same time the Royal Navy pointed out it was fighting a war and doinb its best to protect British interests around the globe.
It’s difficult to quantify how much American privateers cost Britain and British merchants because comprehensive records weren’t kept, and because sometimes a ship would be captured but, when found to have empty holds, released again. Estimates vary between two and eighteen million dollars, at the time - that’s between sixty-five million and over half-a-billion dollars in twenty-twenty-two prices.
While independence was won on land there can be little doubt that stretching the resources of the Royal Navy and disrupting the flow of goods to Britain had an impact on how things turned out.
How, then, are these privateers remembered?
Mostly, they aren’t. The fight for independence, for a new republic, was virtuous and noble, posited on high ideals of liberty and equality - for white male landowners - and government which did not rely on birthright or the alleged sanction of a deity. The war was one of noble sacrifice and bonding together for the common cause of freedom.
Privateers, who fought for personal wealth, and would sail away in pursuit of that aim without thought of the common cause, fell to the side of the portrait of nation building being sketched out for future generations to color in.
However, the effectiveness of privateers in warfare was not forgotten by those who gathered to frame a constitution for the new nation - maybe it helped that some of them had financed such ships and benefited from the wealth they generated.
This right to grant ‘Letters of Marque and reprisal’ is an Article One power reserved to Congress in the Constitution - it’s in Section Eight, above the power to raise armies or provide for a navy.
And, having proven effective in assisting in the establishing of the nation, privateers were found to be effective in defending it. When war with Britain broke out in eighteen-twelve the US Navy consisted of thirty-five ships and had some stand-out victories against the Royal Navy whose fleet numbered nearly ten times as many. Over the course of the war, the US Navy captured about two-hundred-and-fifty ships. But it was privateers who inflicted the fiscal damage which shook the world superpower. As with the war of independence the real damage was in the merchants who lost their wares.
While records are incomplete it’s estimated that somewhere between twelve hundred and two-thousand ships were taken by privateers. As previously some were turned loose because their holds were empty, others were re-captured by the Royal Navy, some were burnt and sunk, but plenty were sailed home to acclaim. Such was the impact of privateers sailing out of Baltimore that, anecdotally, London newspapers took to calling it a ‘nest of pirates’.
And this time privateers were fêted, appreciation was shown for the impact they had in a war which confirmed the US was truly an independent nation and, more than that, a nation which would fight to protect its interests and expand its territory.
So, where did the privateers go?
By the middle of the nineteenth century a majority of sea-faring nations came together and agreed to do away with Letters of Marque. They recognised that privateers could not be adequately controlled because the drive for profit and to fulfil the financial obligations made to backers was, often, stronger than the requirement to recognise the flag of a neutral nation, or the end of hostilities under which the Letter of Marque had been granted.
Initially the United States refused to sign the eighteen-fifty-six Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law. That changed in eighteen-sixty-one after eleven states seceded and, in the constitution for their Confederate States of America, allowed for the provision of Letters of Marque.
When the Confederate privateers Savannah and Petrel were captured in June and July eighteen-sixty-one the crews were held as pirates, which carried an inherent threat of execution. They were later exchanged. However, the swiftness with which the privateers were captured, and the fate of the crews, put a crimp on the early rush for financiers of privateers in the Confederate Union. When your ships don’t last long at sea, and crews are liable to be held on charges of piracy, financing such a venture is less appealing because it becomes a money losing venture instead of a money making one.
Where privately financed ships assisted in the foundation and then protection of the US, they had a singular lack of effect for the Confederacy. Possibly the fact that the home bases for the belligerents were on the same seaboard, instead of across the width of the Atlantic, had an influence on the matter. Whatever the reasons the age of the privateer was, in the main, over.
And when we consider the advancements in sea warfare technology it becomes easy to understand why it has not returned.
Sail gave way to steam, and now having a more powerful ship could remove you from danger no matter the wind conditions; next came a switch from cannons to gun turrets, and now ships could fire over longer distances and without having to be side-by-side - this made a clear divide between ships fitted for war and those for commerce. Yes, a warship could overcome a merchantman, but transferring cargo was not viable. We see the logical conclusion of this divergence in the Second World War where German warships and submarines made little or no attempt to capture valuable merchant shipping, instead being content to sink it.
When we look at naval warfare now a submarine costs billions of dollars, a warship between a third and two-thirds of a billion.
Even if the financial trade-off were viable the act of endorsing capture of a modern container ship or bulk carrier would immediately make a pariah of the country which provided a private concern such a licence to act.
Today the United States Naval strength is about three-hundred and sixty ships, a similar number to Britain’s navy a few hundred years ago, but with unimaginably more range and firepower available to each vessel. With such a navy it can protect its borders, the nation’s merchants, and project force in multiple arenas around the world simultaneously.
And that is where the story of privateers and the United States draws to a close, until we realise the previous sentence is not quite correct. In the early two-thousands there was ‘a recognition that the challenges of maritime security were too complex and diffuse for the United States to handle on its own’. The suggestion put forward was for ‘a self-organizing, self-governing, come-as-you-are cooperative global maritime security network that coordinate[s] the activities of volunteer nations' navies, coastguards and constabulary units’.
One thing missing from that list of partner organisations is Private Military Contractors, or PMC’s. These are not to be confused with the mercenaries who rampaged around Africa during the mid-to-late twentieth century, offering their assistance in various coup attempts. PMC’s do rise from the same source as mercenaries, soldiers, and sailors, with deep skill sets which have little transferable value in a normal civilian world.
A PMC will work with the approval, even sanction, of their home government, on many occasions on behalf of it. The first such entity was set up in nineteen-sixty-five by a group of British servicemen formerly of the Secret Air Service - the inspiration for Delta Force - and today Britain is still home to several notable PMC’s. By far, though, the largest such concerns are now headquartered in the United States, and have extensive experience in providing support, logistics, and other services in various war zones and hotspots around the world.
The difference between these PMC’s and privateers of times gone past is where the money comes from. While there are more than rumours of such companies obtaining riches nefariously in places they operate, by far the majority of their wealth comes from the coffers of the countries they work for. No longer do the riches of merchants pay for private militaries, the taxpayer does.
And such is the income they generate that, around the world, elite force units are having difficulty holding on to their most experienced personnel, seeing them depart for higher salaries, fewer outright risks, and more down time.
As with the privateers of independence most are willing to pretend PMC’s and their wealth seeking participants are not part of the national narrative. The companies happily agree and bank their cheques.
words by stuartcturnbull. Picture licenced from Kirsten Alana and worked in Canva