Only The Privateers Were Still Contesting The Seas

Because Great Britain had never accepted the loss of the American colonies, they ignored the sovereignty of the United States and began measures to regain what they believed was their territory. While the United States was prepared for war neither on land nor at sea, the Americans were fortunate that the British were still fighting Napoleon on the Continent and neighboring waters and could not focus their full power on regaining their colonies. During the brief War of 1812, the United States issued more than five hundred letters of marque to privateers, who captured or sank more than seventeen hundred British ships. The most successful of these privateers, the Yankee, made six cruises against the British and captured forty vessels. Proceeds from these prizes enriched the owner and crew of the Yankee to the sum of $5 million.

Privateers limited the resupply of British forces in America. By the end of the war many British merchant owners had difficulty even acquiring insurance for their vessels bound for North America because of their previous losses.

In the War of 1812, for instance, the United States was certainly an inferior naval power. And while the early frigate battles against the British were thrilling victories that owed much to superior American ship design, they affected the balance of power not one whit. By 1814 the American Navy was bottled up in port, as was nearly all our commercial shipping.

Only the privateers were still contesting the seas—and doing a splendid job of it. Private enterprise served the public good on the high seas—and made its promoters a bundle. British insurance rates skyrocketed that year, reaching as high as 30 percent of the value of the ship for voyages between Liverpool and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Even in the Irish Sea—British territorial waters—insurance rates were 13 percent. The Naval Chronicle, a semi-official British publication, reported that “the depredations committed on our commerce by American … privateers, has attained an extent beyond all former precedents.”

Again, the reason for this success was in large measure ship design. The Baltimore clipper, a lean, deephulled schooner that had originated in this country, made a nearly perfect privateer. Exceptionally fast, it was more than a match for the tubby merchant ships of the day. Equally important, it could also outsail anything it couldn’t outfight. And it could accommodate a very large number of men while being handled by very few. This allowed many of the men to be deployed as prize crews, sailing the captured ships into friendly ports to be sold along with their cargoes.

One of these privateers, the Prince de Neufchâtel, had a short, brilliant, and highly profitable career, one that might have been summoned from the vasty deep of Patrick O’Brian’s imagination, except that it happens to be true.

The Prince de Neufchâtel was built in New York in 1812–13 and was owned by a New York woman named Flory Charretton, whose son-in-law, J. Ordronaux, captained the ship. The Prince was 110 feet long, with only a 25-foot beam. Even in heavy seas she was capable of more than thirteen knots and under ideal conditions might have reached twenty, a breathtaking speed for a sailing ship.

The American government granted her owner a letter-of-marque (a license to operate as a privateer) on October 28, 1813, and she soon sailed for Europe, slipping into the French port of Cherbourg. Fitted out as a privateer there, she evaded the British blockade in March 1814 and quickly snapped up nine prizes in the English Channel. In June she took six more in as many days and spent the rest of the summer in European waters, capturing merchantmen and leading the Royal Navy a merry chase, easily outsailing no fewer than seventeen British men-of-war who pursued her. Altogether the Prince de Neufchâtel profited her owners and crew that summer to the tune of three million dollars, a great fortune by the standards of the day.

By September she had recrossed the Atlantic and, again running a British blockade, entered Boston Harbor for a refit. Soon back at sea, the Prince de Neufchâtel was becalmed off Nantucket in early October with a prize in company (and more than two hundred thousand dollars in booty in her hold) when a British frigate, the Endymion, sighted her. Had the Endymion been able to bring her vastly greater armament to bear, she would have made short work of the Prince de Neufchâtel. But after she gave chase, she, too, was becalmed.

Shortly after dark, the Endymion launched a cutting-out expedition, loading her five ship’s boats with 111 men, perhaps a third of her crew, in order to surround and capture the privateer. Although the Prince could carry as many as 150 men, so many had been detailed as prize crews that there were only 37 men on board fit to fight.

But while outnumbered three to one, Captain Ordronaux vowed to blow his ship up rather than surrender, and his crew fought with extraordinary ferocity. Theodore Roosevelt, in his utterly splendid The Naval War of 1812, described the “desperate and bloody struggle”: “Men fought like wild beasts and grappled with each other in deadly embrace. Knives, pistols, cutlasses, marlin spikes, belaying pins—anything that could deal an effective blow—were in requisition, while even bare fists, fingernails, and teeth came into play.”

The battle was over in twenty minutes, when the surviving British called for quarter and were taken prisoner. Of the five attacking boats, one was sunk, three adrift beyond recovery, and one was captured. The British losses were 33 killed and 37 wounded, and 30 made prisoners; only 11 escaped. Of the Prince de Neufchâtel’s crew of 37, 7 were killed and 24 were wounded, 15 severely. Only 6 able-bodied sailors were left to handle the ship. Regardless, Ordronaux was able to land his prisoners and wounded on Nantucket and make it back to Boston safely with his prize and booty intact.

A few months later, under a different captain, the Prince de Neufchâtel was captured when she encountered three British frigates in a fierce storm and lost a spar trying to escape. So impressed was the British commander with the Prince that he ordered her to England to have her lines taken off. Unfortunately, when she was refloated in dry dock, she hung up on the sill of the dock gates and broke her back.

But if the Prince de Neufchâtel came to an early end after a glorious career, many of her sister privateers survived and entered a far less glorious form of enterprise after the war. For alas, the very qualities that made them successful as privateers—great speed and the ability to hold large numbers of human beings—made them all too useful as slavers.

The Napoleonic Wars had the effect of augmenting the size of the major naval forces into large fleets capable of both defensive and offensive action. The rise of these powerful navies along with the general antiprivateer movement decreased the number of letters of marque issued during the four decades following Napoleon's final defeat in 1815. Several European countries made agreements to not use privateers against each other during this period, but it was not until 1856 that Great Britain, now the most powerful kingdom with the strongest army and navy in the world, called a conference to abolish the practice.

On April 16 of that year Britain signed the Treaty of Paris along with France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey. Included in the treaty was the establishment of a uniform doctrine on "Maritime Law in time of war," which proclaimed that "Privateering is, and remains, abolished."

After the treaty was signed, forty-six additional countries that historically issued letters of marque were invited to accede to the agreement. Most did so almost immediately, and by the end of 1858, forty-two had agreed to end privateering. Only Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, and the United States refused to sign.

Several years before the Paris accord, the Americans had signed treaties with two dozen countries allowing free, unmolested trade among the signers, but none of these agreements specifically banned privateering. The United States was still one of the "have nots" in military power and still favored privateering as a way of augmenting its naval forces.

The United States soon regretted its decision to continue to support privateering when in 1861 its Southern states seceded from the Union. With a navy much larger and more powerful than the all-but-nonexistent sea force of the rebels, the United States now embraced the rationale of demonizing privateering. However, England and France refused a request from the United States to declare the Confederate privateers to be pirates, taking the position that they had already acknowledged the Confederacy as a neutral country. They also noted that the United States was not a signatory to the Paris treaty.

A year after the American Civil War ended, the government of Chile in South America issued letters of marque to privateers in its war against Spain. Over the next decades other countries considered issuing letters of marque, but the general opinion against the practice around the world and the increased strength of modern navies to combat such action brought an end to privateering.

Since 1856 there have been few opportunities for mercenaries to find employment at sea. Piracy still exists, but today's seaborne thieves do not operate with any government sanctions. Some of the modern private military companies advise and provide training for foreign navies, but generally the sailor of fortune has retired into history.

John Steele Gordon. Commerce Raider. American Heritage. September 1995; Volume 46, Issue 5.

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