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.

In an exploration of the oceanic connections of the Atlantic world, Michael J. Jarvis recovers a mariner's view of early America as seen through the eyes of Bermuda's seafarers. The first social history of eighteenth-century Bermuda, this book profiles how one especially intensive maritime community capitalized on its position "in the eye of all trade." Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops and follows white and enslaved sailors as they shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, harvested timber, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband in an expansive maritime sphere spanning Great Britain's North American and Caribbean colonies. In doing so, he shows how humble sailors and seafaring slaves operating small family-owned vessels were significant but underappreciated agents of Atlantic integration. The American Revolution starkly revealed the extent of British America's integration before 1775 as it shattered interregional links that Bermudians had helped to forge. Reliant on North America for food and customers, Bermudians faced disaster at the conflict's start. A bold act of treason enabled islanders to continue trade with their rebellious neighbors and helped them to survive and even prosper in an Atlantic world at war. Ultimately, however, the creation of the United States ended Bermuda's economic independence and doomed the island's maritime economy.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book offers true stories of bloodthirsty pirates and the courageous men trying to stop them during the Western Hemisphere's golden age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The real world of piracy is brought vividly to life in this authoritative and entertaining new two-volume reference. Incorporating a wealth of new research, Pirates of the Americas offers hundreds of entries on the most famous—and infamous—buccaneers of the 1600s and 1700s, separating fact from fancy as it describes the men, their exploits, and the era in which they prowled the seas of North and Central America. Pirates of the Americas begins in the mid- to late-17th century Caribbean—the earliest cradle of piracy in the New World—with detailed coverage of Dutch and French corsairs, English rovers such as Henry Morgan, and the Spaniards who fought against them all. The second volume marks the retreat of piracy into new hunting grounds—the Pacific and Red Sea—from the 1690s to the early 18th century, ending with the final pursuit into extinction in North America of last-gasp renegades such as William Kidd, Bartholomew Roberts, and Blackbeard.