My understanding is that many pirates were more or less condoned by the governments of where they came from. The English Crown, I think, enlisted pirates to steal gold that the Spanish were finding in South America. It was kind of like an unofficial war, but not for territory or expansion, just for the money.
I believe you had to have a Letter of Marque, a comission from the government to do this sort of thing. Otherwise you be hanged like a, well, pirate.
You mean if you were from England, and you attacked a Spanish ship, to bring home gold, that the Crown would hang you because you didn’t have the letter? Or do you mean that the Spanish would hang you if they caught you? If the later, I don’t see why the Spanish would pay any attention to a Letter of Marque. They’d probably hang you all they same.
See this thread for a discussion of privateers and Letters of Marque. To summarize: a Letter of Marque authorized you as a private warship. Your govt. allowed you to commit acts of warfare against the ships of one or more specified enemy country. In return, you had to return your prizes to your country and the govt took a percentage of the value.
If any Navy catches a pirate, they generally hang them all, regardless of nationality. Navies hate pirates.
If your own Navy finds you towing a couple of enemy merchant ships, but you have an LoM, they leave you alone.
If the enemy Navy finds you towing a couple of their own merchant ships, they capture you all and take your ship, but are supposed to treat the sailors and officers as POWs. I’m sure some captains didn’t follow this rule, but legally, a privateer is entitled to the same protections as a member of his own country’s Navy.
Also remember, in Napoleonic times & earlier, a Navy ship happening on an enemy merchant would do their very best to capture it anyway - the crew got to keep a lot of the value of the prizes they took.
If you were English and you didn’t have a Letter of Marque and you took a Spanish ship as a prize and then the Royal Navy hauled you alongside for a chat then you were screwed. They could take your ship and the Spanish ships as prizes, press your crew and hang you. If you did have a Letter of Marque they could still do all that stuff except hang you.
Not true. If you had a LoM from the British crown, the British Navy couldn’t legally repossess the Spanish prizes you had already captured. They could definitely always press your crew though.
“Golly, you don’t have any crew left to man those treasure ships. We’d better take care of them for you. Can’t leave them drifing about as a hazard to navigation, you know.”
I know you’re kidding, but as I understand it, the Navy ship was always supposed to leave enough men on the ship it was pressing from to allow it to make port safely. Not to say some Navy officers might not have had interesting ideas on how many men that might be.
As an interesting bit of irony, James Beard was originally from Portland, OR, home of “International Talk Like A Pirate Day.” Arggh!
We really need a pirate smiley!
Which I prolly been reading too much Patrick O’Brian lately.
Because why? Because POB is always right, mate.
Huh? I read POB all the time too, and I don’t remember a Royal Navy ship taking a lawful prize away from a privateer. Do you remember which book?
Why is it called the dog watch?
Because which, mate, it is CUR-tailed.
Hah Hah Hah! Do you smoke it?
Because it’s cur-tailed.
It seems that Jack was ill-used by someone who was junior to him in the navy. Some onw more salty than I will remember which book.
I’m going to eat a drowned baby…
I’m only up to Letters of Marque and I think that scene is in it. No prizes were involved but the junior guy hauled Surprise under his lee and had Jack come aboard and then made him wait before seeing him. The junior guy saw that aoo of Jack’s Letters of Marque were in order but wanted to press a score of Jack’s crew. Jack whipped out another letter from someone in the Admiralty protecting his crew from empressment. Jack’s crew then mooned the Junior guy as they pulled away. Funny scene. In the next book (The Thirteen Gun Salute) Jack has a new letter requiring all Captains to render all possible aid to Jack’s mission. I can’t wait to see how that works out.
Thanks!
That’s what I have seen as well. When they did the whole intro to this show that was a lot of what they hit on. I’m psuched to see just how crazy these sons of bitches were.
The Kra Isthmus, if anyone cares for the item of trivia. Thailand is only about 30-40 miles wide, with both east and west coasts, at the point where the Burmese province of Tenasserim ends and the Andaman Sea coastline of Thailand begins.