Letter of Marque, Click to see more
Two hundred and forty years ago today, the Continental Congress authorized the commissioning of privateers to attack British ships. It was still three months before the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. The legislation was in many respects simply catching up with what was already going on in New England and elsewhere along the coast. A year earlier, in the spring of 1775, the colony of Massachusetts had begun commissioning privateers. Likewise, General Washington began chartering schooners to act as commerce raiders to help supply his army surrounding Boston.
Over the course of the war, about 1,700 Letters of Marque and Reprisal, which is to say, privateering commissions, were granted to nearly 800 privateering vessels, which captured or destroyed about 600 British ships. By comparison, the Continental Navy never numbered more than 70 vessels and captured fewer than 200 British ships.
The nature of privateering is often misunderstood. They were not pirates. Privateers were private vessels of war commissioned by a state or nation. They may often be called pirates, but this ignores both history and the law. International law defines piracy as violence or theft on the high seas for private ends. Privateers’ commissions, the Letter of Marque, separated them from pirates acting “for private ends.”
Privateers were limited to attacking only enemy ships. They were required to sail the captured ships to an Admiralty Court where ships and cargo would be sold at auction. The commission also provided rules for the treatment of prisoners — requirements totally alien to the practice of piracy. Is is true that some privateers became outright pirates at the end of a war and that some pirates used forged letters of marque to pretend to be pirates. Nevertheless, the two are fundamentally different.
Privateers had most of the rights and responsibilities of naval vessels but were privately owned. Like naval vessels, the owners, officers, and crew of the privateer were awarded “prize money” for the capture of enemy ships and cargo after they had been auctioned. Both privateers and commissioned naval officers could become wealthy from prize money. The US Navy continued granting prize money to its officers and crews until 1941. The crewmen of USS Omaha received prize money for taking a German blockade runner on 6 November 1941, just before America’s entry into World War II.
One of the reason, that there has been so much confusion about privateers may be related to their role as commerce raiders. While privateers could, and did, do battle with naval vessels, the targets of choice were unarmed merchantmen, which offered lower risks and higher profits. Many historians refer to commerce raiding as the work of privateers, regardless of what form of commission the captain carried.
Captain John Manley is often referred to as a privateer when in 1775, in Boston harbor, while in command of the schooner Hannah, he captured the British ordnance vessel, Nancy, loaded with 2,000 muskets, 31 tons of musket shot, 30,000 round shot of various sizes, 100,000 musket flints, 11 mortar beds, and a 2,700-pound 13-inch mortar — supplies needed desperately by the American army surrounding Boston. As Washington had no authority to issue Letters of Marque, Captain Manley was considered to be an officer in the Continental Army.
Likewise, in 1779, Commodore Abraham Whipple, sailing in a squadron of three ships off Newfoundland successfully captured ten ships in a British convoy without firing a shot. The three captains; Whipple, Rathbun, and Simpson; were hailed as “bold privateers” in the broadsides of the day, celebrating the capture, even though all three were commissioned naval officers. On the other hand, Abraham Whipple did have a history as a very successful privateer during the French and Indian Wars, capturing 23 French ships in one six-month cruise. Many of the best officers in the Continental Navy began their careers as privateers.
John Paul Jones, also a commissioned officer, was variously called a pirate and a privateer by the British press.
Privateering is still referenced in the US Constitution, Article I, Sec. 8 cl. 11, which includes in the duties of Congress: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;.
Nevertheless, as a matter of international law, privateering was abolished in 1856 by the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law.
I have sometimes wondered whether and why letters of marque issued by governments or ruling bodies that effectively were themselves considered by established governments as rebel or revolutionary organisations, not (yet) accepted as governments of established states or countries, would be recognised and honoured if of a privateer sailing under one were to be taken.
I think the issue is reciprocity. As long as both sides had privateers sailing and more or less playing by the established rules, it made sense to honor the Letter of Marque. During the American Civil War, after privateering had effectively been abandoned in international law, the US captured Confederate privateers and threatened to hang them as pirates. The Confederate Navy threatened to hang an equal number of US naval officers in response. The US backed off and treated the Confederate sailors as prisoners of war.
Suppose, for example, Lord Cochrane had been taken by the Spanish authorities during his naval campaigns for Chile, Peru, or Brazil? Or, one, for Greece? What would have happened?
Or, indeed, I meant…
Interesting question. I don’t know how mercenaries hired by a rebel group are considered under international law.
There may well be a difference of application of the terms ‘privateer’ and ‘letter of marque’ between different countries and between eras, of course, and I most certainly can not claim to be an expert on Marcher Law; it’s a complicated and pretty esoteric subject.
At a conference in Portsmouth a while ago I had the good fortune to find myself sitting next to one who undoubtedly is an authority on Marcher Law, and who I had heard include the subject in a lecture at the NMM the previous year, to wit, N.A.M. Rodger, who I shall quote below, also on the subject of Letters of Reprisal (from French “Reprendre”, pp. “Repris”, literally “to retake”, “to take back”), even if he was writing primarily in that passage of an earlier era. This is from his “The Safeguard of the Sea”, pp. 199-200, Vol. 1 of his ongoing complete history of the (British – since there are still others!) Royal Navy, the first since Clowes well over 100 years ago. I quote this just because it is interesting to trace the origins of the terms, way back to the much earlier Tudor period.
In the chapter “Operations 1550-1572”, he says:
“Here we need to pause a moment to define some terms. It is usual and convenient to talk of Elizabethan ‘privateering’. but the word is strictly anachronistic, for it was only coined in the seventeenth century to describe a legal status which was just then emerging from obscurity. In sixteenth century England there were only two ways in law by which ships owned by private citizens might capture other ships for profit. One was a general proclamation, which in principle limited captures to the ships of a named enemy in wartime, but provided no means of enforcing its terms. The other was the much older “letter of reprisal”, deriving from medieval marcher law (whence the term lettre de mark), under which a merchant, traveler or shipowner who had been robbed in the territory or by the subjects of a foreign prince in time of peace, and had been unable to obtain justice in the courts of that country, was authorised by a court (the Admiralty Court in the case of reprisals by sea) to recoup his losses, up to a specified sum, by seizing the property of persons belonging to the town or country concerned. This letter of reprisal, originally (and still in French) known as a ‘letter of marque’, was entirely different from the ‘letter of marque’ of the late seventeenth or eighteenth century, a licence issued by an Admiralty Court in time of war, under legal safeguards, empowering a privately-owned ship to cruise against the shipping of a named enemy, and to sell her prizes only after they had been condemned as enemy property by such a court. This, the classic form of privateering, could by definition be practised only in wartime, whilst in theory letters of reprisal could be issued only in peacetime. In sixteenth century practice, however, ‘peace’ might very often mean undeclared war; civil wars and rebellions provided numerous authorities, desperate or unscrupulous, willing to issue letters with no questions asked; reprisals usually provoked counter-reprisals; and English Lords Admiral were notoriously ready to turn a blind eye towards any activity from which they were entitled to ten percent of the proceeds
The same was true of Scotland, and with the same results, as a proclamation of 1525 recognised and deplored, since it was ruining international relations of the ‘soprano lord’ in question: (Roger M’s note: I couldn’t resist quoting this as originally written in Scottish English of the early 16th Century.) From Rodger’s notes:
‘Our soverane lord and lordis of consale are sickirlie informit that ane certane [number] of his liegis, maisteris, awnaris and marinaris of schippis [dwell] and in Leith is to depart in weirefare, and be that rubrys and spulzeis maid upon frenndis that have causit our sovrane lord and his leigis to have mony inymyis quhilkis war frenndis before, and presoponis that thai sall do siclik in tyme tocom…’
In Scotland, moreover, a letter of reprisal was heritable property which might remain in force for generations: in 1561 Captain Patrick Blackader (yes, really!) was taking Portuguese prizes by virtue of a letter originally granted in 1476. Further confusion existed in the Mediterranean where the North African ‘regencies’ and the Christian powers maintained more or less permanent warfare of which the capture of slaves was the principal object. In the Americas…etc.”
If I ever get the opportunity again to ask more of N.A.M. Rodger , I shall take it.
In ye meane tymme, my frenndis, ye are herebye informit that we knowe not sickirlie ane anser but presoponis that thai sall do siclik in tyme tocom. I remasne, my liegis, maisteris, awnaris, marinaris and modeleris of schippis of sundrye kyndes, youer fidel servante Roger Marsh.
Post scriptum – my spellechequerre just blewwit uppe, with noyse as loude as twere a thonderdent that with ye blastte I amoust wer yblent.
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