English Privateers: an Introduction

Henry III of England granted the first Letter of Reprisal in 1243. The precursor of the Letter of Marque, these letters licensed a ship to attack enemy ships without fear of punishment. In exchange, the king received a share of all plunder and increased the size of his navy without having to pay to crew, maintain, or supply them. Originally, ships granted such licenses were called "private men-of-war," but this was shortened to privateer. In time, the term privateer came to represent the ship, the captain, and the crew.

Privateering flourished between the 16th and 18th centuries, a time when European countries waged almost constant war against each other. In theory privateers attacked only enemy ships and did so in accordance with the restrictions delineated in their letters of marque. In reality some privateers bent the rules and attacked ships of friendly nations, which constituted acts of piracy.

Even though privateers possessed licenses giving them permission to plunder enemy merchant ships, the enemy didn't necessarily agree with the legality of what they did. Spain viewed any such attacks on their ships as acts of piracy, and treated captured privateers accordingly.

Queen Elizabeth I's privateers were known as Sea Dogs. The best known of these was Francis Drake, whom she called "her pirate." His ventures brought her great wealth, and in 1581 she knighted him. Other Sea Dogs included John Hawkins and Thomas Cavendish. Although Sir Walter Raleigh wasn't a privateer, he did promote them. He used the proceeds garnered from these ventures to fund expeditions to his Virginia colony. Elizabeth, however, deemed privateering of greater import than colonization, which is why Raleigh's ships didn't return to Roanoke as planned and why what became of the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery to this day.

Early privateers sailed in fifty- to one-hundred-ton barques with crews of forty or fifty men. Later, they converted merchant ships with three times the tonnage. Drake's Golden Hinde, an English race-built galleon with a sleeker hull than that of a Spanish galleon, measured seventy-five feet long and twenty feet wide, and weighed 120 tons. She carried eighteen guns of various size. The English galleons were fast, well armed, and easy to maneuver. Instead of erecting the towering superstructures common on Spanish galleons, the English ones were low and rose gradually toward the quarterdeck. They preferred guns on carriages with four wheels instead of two large ones. Their gun crews trained regularly because these English privateers avoided close contact with the enemy and relied on the guns to win the confrontations.

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