Download or read book Privateers of the Americas written by David Head (Ph. D.) and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privateers of the Americas examines raids on Spanish shipping conducted from the United States during the early 1800s. These activities were sanctioned by, and conducted on behalf of, republics in Spanish America aspiring to independence from Spain. Among the available histories of privateering, there is no comparable work. Because privateering further complicated international dealings during the already tumultuous Age of Revolution, the book also offers a new perspective on the diplomatic and Atlantic history of the early American republic. Seafarers living in the United States secured commissions from Spanish American nations, attacked Spanish vessels, and returned to sell their captured cargoes (which sometimes included slaves) from bases in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Galveston and on AmeliaIsland. Privateers sold millions of dollars of goods to untold numbers of ordinary Americans. Their collective enterprise involved more than a hundred vessels and thousands of people—not only ships’ crews but also investors, merchants, suppliers, and others. They angered foreign diplomats, worried American officials, and muddied U.S. foreign relations. David Head looks at how Spanish American privateering worked and who engaged in it; how the U.S. government responded; how privateers and their supporters evaded or exploited laws and international relations; what motivated men to choose this line of work; and ultimately, what it meant to them to sail for the new republics of Spanish America. His findings broaden our understanding of the experience of being an American in a wider world. DAVID HEAD is an assistantprofessor of history at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Cover design: Erin Kirk New Cover illustration: Early American Places logo The University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 www.ugapress.org ISBN (paper) 978-0-8203-4864-3

Download or read book American Privateers of the Revolutionary War written by Angus Konstam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the American War of Independence (1775–83), Congress issued almost 800 letters of marque, as a way of combating Britain's overwhelming naval and mercantile superiority. At first, it was only fishermen and the skippers of small merchant ships who turned to privateering, with mixed results. Eventually though, American shipyards began to turn out specially-converted ships, while later still, the first purpose-built privateers entered the fray. These American privateers seized more than 600 British merchant ships over the course of the war, capturing thousands of British seamen. Indeed, Jeremiah O'Brien's privateer Unity fought the first sea engagement of the Revolutionary War in the Battle of Machias of 1775, managing to capture a British armed schooner with just 40 men, their guns, axes and pitchforks, and the words 'Surrender to America'. By the end of the war, some of the largest American privateers could venture as far as the British Isles, and were more powerful than most contemporary warships in the fledgling US Navy. A small number of Loyalist privateers also put to sea during the war, and preyed on the shipping of their rebel countrymen. Packed with fascinating insights into the age of privateers, this book traces the development of these remarkable ships, and explains how they made such a significant contribution to the American Revolutionary War.

Download or read book A History of American Privateers written by Edgar Stanton Maclay and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A History of American Privateers written by Edgar Stanton Maclay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An 1899 account of the role of privateers in winning the American War of Independence and building the American Navy.

Download or read book Privateering written by Faye Kert and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to tell the tale of the War of 1812 from the privateers’ perspective. Winner of the John Lyman Book Award of the North American Society for Oceanic History During the War of 1812, most clashes on the high seas involved privately owned merchant ships, not official naval vessels. Licensed by their home governments and considered key weapons of maritime warfare, these ships were authorized to attack and seize enemy traders. Once the prizes were legally condemned by a prize court, the privateers could sell off ships and cargo and pocket the proceeds. Because only a handful of ship-to-ship engagements occurred between the Royal Navy and the United States Navy, it was really the privateers who fought—and won—the war at sea. In Privateering, Faye M. Kert introduces readers to U.S. and Atlantic Canadian privateers who sailed those skirmishing ships, describing both the rare captains who made money and the more common ones who lost it. Some privateers survived numerous engagements and returned to their pre-war lives; others perished under violent circumstances. Kert demonstrates how the romantic image of pirates and privateers came to obscure the dangerous and bloody reality of private armed warfare. Building on two decades of research, Privateering places the story of private armed warfare within the overall context of the War of 1812. Kert highlights the economic, strategic, social, and political impact of privateering on both sides and explains why its toll on normal shipping helped convince the British that the war had grown too costly. Fascinating, unfamiliar, and full of surprises, this book will appeal to historians and general readers alike.

Download or read book Privateer Ships and Sailors written by Howard M. Chapin and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Privateer Ships and Sailors written by Howard M. Chapin and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Patriot Pirates written by Robert H. Patton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively narrative history, Robert H. Patton, grandson of the World War II battlefield legend, tells a sweeping tale of courage, capitalism, naval warfare, and international political intrigue set on the high seas during the American Revolution. Patriot Pirates highlights the obscure but pivotal role played by colonial privateers in defeating Britain in the American Revolution. American privateering-essentially legalized piracy-began with a ragtag squadron of New England schooners in 1775. It quickly erupted into a massive seaborne insurgency involving thousands of money-mad patriots plundering Britain's maritime trade throughout Atlantic. Patton's extensive research brings to life the extraordinary adventures of privateers as they hammered the British economy, infuriated the Royal Navy, and humiliated the crown.

Download or read book Privateering Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810 1830 written by Matthew McCarthy and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how the political turmoil of the Spanish American Wars of Independence allowed an upsurge in prize-taking activity by navies, privateers and pirates. Private maritime predation was integral to the Spanish American Wars of Independence. When colonists rebelled against Spanish rule in 1810 they deployed privateers - los corsarios insurgentes - to prosecute their revolutionary struggle at sea. Spain responded by commissioning privateers of its own, while the disintegration of Spanish authority in the New World created conditions in which unauthorised prize-taking - piracy - also flourished. This upsurge in privateering and piracy has been neglected by historians yet it posed a significant threat to British interests. As numerous vessels were captured and plundered, the British government - endeavouring to remain neutral in the Spanish American conflict - faced a dilemma. An insufficient response might hinder Britain's commercial expansion but an overly aggressive approach risked plunging the nation into another war. Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America assesses the varied and flexible ways the British government responded to prize-taking activity in order to safeguard and enhance its wider commercial and political objectives. This analysis marks a significant and original contribution to the study of privateering and piracy, and informs key debates about the development of international law and the character of British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Matthew McCarthy is Research Officer at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Hull in 2011 and won the British Commission for Maritime History/Boydell & Brewer prize for best doctoral thesis in maritime history.

Download or read book America s Privateer Lynx and the War of 1812 written by J. Dennis Robinson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Most Successful American Privateer written by Wilfred Harold Munro and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Most Successful American Privateer written by Archer Butler Hulbert and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The American Privateers written by Donald Barr Chidsey and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Factual history of the art and practice of American privateering from Pre-Revolutionary days until the Civil War.

Download or read book Privateer Ships and Sailors written by Howard Chapin and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2017 Reprint of 1926 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. A privateer was a private person or ship that engaged in maritime warfare under a commission of war. The commission, also known as a letter of marque, empowered the person to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war, including attacking foreign vessels during wartime and taking them as prizes. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, with the proceeds divided between the privateer sponsors, ship owners, captains and crew. A percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission. Since robbery under arms was common to seaborne trade, all merchant ships were already armed. During war, naval resources were auxiliary to operations on land so privateering was a way of subsidizing state power by mobilizing armed ships and sailors. Chapin's work covers the first century of American colonial privateering, 1625-1725. This includes the not only the American colonies, but the Caribbean colonies as well. A title that is very difficult to find on the second hand market.

Download or read book American Privateer written by and published by iUniverse. This book was released on with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dark Voyage written by Christian M. McBurney and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark Voyage: An American Privateer's War on Britain's African Slave Trade is the never-before-told story of the extraordinary 1778 voyage of the American ship Marlborough that sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to attack the heart of the British slave trading empire in West Africa. Conceived and funded by prominent Rhode Island merchant John Brown, the 20-gun double-decked brig and its mission would have been forgotten were it not for the little-known primary source document, Journal of the Good Ship Marlborough, recognized by the author for its extraordinary importance to the history of slavery and the American Revolution.

Download or read book Citizen Sailors written by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades after the United States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens. None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them far from home and deep into the Atlantic world. Citizen Sailors tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially inclusive model of United States citizenship. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors’ pursuit of safe passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution. Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In response, federal leaders created a system of national identification documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners of all races—nearly a century before such credentials came into wider use. Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it marked the federal government’s most extensive foray into defining the boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the government’s most explicit recognition of black Americans’ equal membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815. Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.