PRIVATEERING — THE BUSINESS OF PIRACY: PART 2

(This post is a continuation of Privateering — The Business of Piracy: Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably best to read that post before continuing on here.)

Once the organizers of a Dutch privateering expedition had gotten an endorsement from one of the Admiralties, received the required letter of marque from the Stadtholder, arranged financing, outfitted the ship, chosen a captain and crew, and paid the security bond, the privateer ship was ready to set out to sea.

Early seventeenth century Dutch privateer ships were, on the whole, of relatively modest size. Claes Compaen, one of the more famous of the generation of early seventeenth century Dutch privateers (he eventually became a pirate), once bought and outfitted a ship that was 80 feet long (about 25 meters), with 17 canons and a crew of 80 men—a typical size for a Dutch privateer, and for both privateers and pirates in general.  (The image at the top of this blog post depicts such a vessel.) A naval warship during this period could be over 150 feet (45 meters) long, mount fifty cannons or more, and have a crew of over 200. So privateers stayed well clear of enemy warships whenever possible. (See the image below for an illustration of the relative sizes of a large warship and a privateer vessel.)

 

 

 

 

 

There were some very large merchant ships—like the great Spanish treasure galleons that crossed the Atlantic every year, loaded with silver and gold from the New World—but there were far more merchant ships of about the same modest size as the privateer vessels. In general, it made financial sense for ship owners to spread out their risk by owning/operating several smaller vessels rather than a single larger one; merchant shipping was a risky business, and the loss of one of several smaller ships was less devastating than the loss of a large one that represented all of the owner’s capital.

The crew of an ordinary merchant ship of this modest size would be no more than about a dozen or so. Privateer ships had much larger crews. They needed to for a variety of reasons: for the “shock and awe” value such a mass of men would have as a means of intimidating their intended prey; to overwhelm their prey if they had to physically board another ship; to have enough men spare to guard any prisoners they might take; and to be able to put skeleton crews aboard captured ships.

So Dutch privateering vessels might have been relatively small, but they were still large enough and well-armed enough to be dangerous, and their compact size made them fast, easily maneuverable, and able to navigate in moderately shallow waters (useful for evading larger adversaries). Plus they had large, intimidating crews. Under anything like ordinary circumstances, most merchant vessels didn’t stand much of a chance against them.

Most Dutch privateer cruises typically lasted a few months. Some, however, could last a full year, or even two, if the waters the ship intended to hunt in were far off—like the Caribbean. The success rate was relatively modest for most cruises. There simply weren’t that many merchant ships around carrying loads of highly valuable cargo. The booty taken generally consisted pedestrian items such as herring, butter, olive oil, salted meat, wine, beer, grain, cotton, ironmongery, cloth, fruit, salt, hides, lumber, etc. Only rarely did privateers manage to capture genuine treasure. It was not uncommon for them to not only take the cargo but also the ship(s) they had attacked.

Once a privateer ship had completed a successful cruise—and not all did—it typically returned to its home port with the booty it had taken. That booty would be carefully itemized and then sold at auction—at least in theory. Some privateers sold off their booty in whatever port they could, a practice that the Dutch Admiralties did their best to discourage

Before anything could be auctioned off in a privateer’s home port in the Republic, the booty first had to be evaluated by an official Prize Court that judged whether or not it was lawful. The legitimacy of the privateer enterprise, remember, depended on legal authorization and control. So this stage in the process was carefully regulated.

Official Prize Courts were held under the auspices of the Admiralty that had sponsored the privateer venture. The privateer Captain presented his log, described his actions while at sea, and submitted a detailed account of the booty he had taken. All this was formally examined. The resulting judgement was rarely in doubt, though. As long as the captain had not directly contravened the provisions of his letter of marque, the booty he had taken would be judged lawful and declared eligible for auction. The whole point of the enterprise, after all, was to acquire loot.

Auctions were advertised ahead of time in flyers and newspapers, and buyers flocked to see the merchandise on offer. Even after the inevitable escalation of prices during the bidding process, the cost of everything was still relatively cheap, for the items on sale were, after all, stolen merchandise, and they typically sold well below market value. Once everything had been auctioned off to the highest bidder, the profits were divvied out. The sponsoring Admiralty received about 12%. The Stadholder received about 6%. After storage and auction costs had been paid, the remaining 80% or so went to the financial backers of the enterprise. They took most of that money, sharing it out on a pro rata basis among the various investors. The remainder went to the Captain (Captains tended to receive about 1% of the total haul) and the crew of the ship.

It was possible to get rich off the proceeds of a single privateer venture, but it was not common, especially for the men who sailed the ship. The expenses for launching an expedition were too high, and there were too many people demanding hefty shares of any profit. Despite the careful regulation of everything, there was also considerable squabbling and disagreement over who was entitled to shares of the profits and how much each contributor should receive. There was also a certain amount of corruption. At times, the whole process could devolve into an ugly feeding frenzy. The losers were frequently the Captain and crew of the ship.

Under anything like ordinary circumstances, when a privateer cruise was successfully completed, the Captain and the crew members made reasonable money, but certainly not enough to retire on. So they went back out on another cruise, and another, and another after that. It was a way of making a living and became for many of them a job pretty much like any other.

The Dutch were not the only privateers during this period by any means.

Privateering was standard operating procedure for both European and Ottoman states. Throughout Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and North Africa, generations of men—grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandsons—made their living as privateers. Some got rich. Some got very, very rich.

So the North African ‘pirates’—the Barbary corsairs—were not actually pirates. Rather, they were legally authorized privateers doing exactly what their Dutch (and other European) counterparts were doing:  attacking and looting enemy shipping and bringing back the booty (which, in the case of the Barbary corsairs, included human beings to be sold into slavery) to enrich the governments of their home ports.

Privateering, moreover was considered an honorable (in some cases even a patriotic) profession—on both sides of the Mediterranean.

Such were the times.