The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [148]
Privateering was a lucrative industry. Congress had no navy when the war began. By the summer of 1775, Rhode Islanders had transformed two ships into warships by adding some guns and Congress had ordered the refitting of several more, but that was a meager fleet.1 America needed a substantial sea force to combat Great Britain’s hundreds of ships and their flotillas of merchant ships carrying millions of dollars worth of supplies to and from America and ports in the West Indies. British privateers also preyed on American merchant ships. The English vessels were equipped with “avarice and enmity,” congressional delegate Richard Henry Lee charged, and America needed the privateers to “clear our coast” of the British villains.2 Building new ships was incredibly expensive and time consuming, so in order create an “instant navy” Congress authorized private shippers that did not already carry cannon for protection to refit their vessels with them to prey on English boats. The refurbishing was completed in American harbors such as Boston, Marblehead, and Newburyport in Massachusetts, New London, Connecticut, or in Caribbean ports.
The owners of every type of ship—brigs, schooners, sloops—refitted their vessels for high seas combat. Most of the sailors on these ships, guaranteed a portion of any booty, signed on when the ship became a privateer.3 The captains of these ships were given “letters of marque” that acknowledged that they fought for America but were entitled to the goods they captured. Some called it a patriotic license to steal.
The heavily armed merchant-turned-privateer vessels were necessary because neutral nations, such as Holland, were willing to trade with America. That meant American ships could sail to a Caribbean island, such as Dutch-held St. Eustatius and there trade their cargoes of tobacco and corn for gunpowder brought to the tiny island by Dutch captains. The gunpowder was essential to the American Revolution. But the laws of neutrality also permitted any belligerent nation (the British) to sink or capture any ship carrying arms for their enemy.4
Privateering became popular because there were so many cargoladen ships that could be taken on the high seas in a region that stretched from Halifax, Canada, all the way to the coast of Brazil; others sailed off the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, and England itself, using French ports as their home. About seventeen hundred American privateers put to sea, six hundred from Massachusetts alone, from 1776 until 1783. As many as 449 sailed at any one time. The privateers ranged in size from one to five hundred tons and carried between four and twenty cannon. Crew sizes averaged about one hundred men, half with muskets for armed engagements, but some ships carried as many as three hundred. The ships carried more than ten thousand seamen with them over the seven years of the war, captured or sank six hundred British vessels (American ships sunk or captured twice as many vessels as the British and five times the value in cargo) and seized goods worth between $18 million and $66 million, according to different records.5
Life on board the privateers could be very lucrative for the ordinary seamen. The ship’s owner received the largest share of the prize booty and the U.S. government received a small cut, but the captain and officers received shares and each seaman was awarded a share. A seaman’s percentage of the booty from a single voyage of a few months, if the prize ships taken were loaded with expensive goods, could provide him with an income for a year or more. The opportunity to make fast money attracted so many investors that merchants sold off shares of their ships. Some ships were owned by a dozen shareholders, but one merchant sold off 196 shares to eager subscribers.6
Newspaper advertising for sailors to serve on privateers emphasized the windfall profits to be earned on the rolling waves of the Atlantic. A Connecticut newspaper ad said that ship owners were looking for “all gentlemen volunteers who are desirous of making their fortunes in