Pirates and Privateers: America's First Navy

At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Colonies had no proper navy: almost all warships were under control of the British Royal Navy, and warships took months if not years to build from scratch. So how would the new fledgling country fight the war on the waves? With piracy!

Shortly after declaring independence the Continental Congress began offering Letters of Marque to any captain willing to accept them. These documents authorized privately owned vessels to attack merchant and civilian shipping in the name of the host country; essentially state-sponsored piracy . These privately owned and fitted ships were known as privateers.

However, the legitimacy of privateers and the line between them and pirates is a blurry one. To be considered a true privateer, one must have the proper paperwork from a sovereign nation, and sovereignty was determined by other nations; some other sovereign nation must recognize your own sovereignty for it to be legitimate. If that is the case, the American Colonies were not considered sovereign until after the Battle of Saratoga, when the Kingdom of France officially signed on to an alliance with the United State. That taken into account, the Letters of Marque distributed prior would be considered null-and-void by other sovereign nations (mainly England) thus making the privateers true-blue pirates!

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