We asked, you voted and….apparently y’all want vampire lore, true crime, AND pirate stories pretty equally. So, unlike other elections, we’re gonna make sure no one is unhappy with the final outcome and give the people what they want. First up? Piracy!
We went to Hottest Hell’s resident pirate scholar, our beloved bearded guide Doug, and asked him to break down for you what makes a pirate a pirate. The answer isn’t a peg leg or a combination of guyliner and gold teeth…it’s a piece of paper. We’ll let Doug take it from here:
“The air was akin to boiling soup and filled with clouds of mosquitos on September 3, 1814, the day British officers approached the most infamous of New Orleans’ smugglers. They came to Frenchman Jean Lafitte in the shallows of Barataria Bay bearing both a gift and an ultimatum: “Either you accept our gift, or we burn your entire smuggling operation to the ground.” Famously, Jean Lafitte rejected the gift and immediately wrote to the US government—the same one he’d spent a lifetime thwarting—tattling on the Brits and saying he was now Team America if they’d have him.
The “gift” in this case? The one thing that could’ve made an honest man out of a nefarious Gulf pirate. It was simple letter signed off under King George III himself, commonly referred to as a “Letter of Marque.” As defined, such a letter is “a license to fit out an armed vessel and use it in the capture of enemy merchant shipping, and to commit acts which would otherwise have constituted piracy.” (Piracy otherwise being a crime.)
These letters were not strictly applied to “merchant vessels,” however—they were, obviously, extended to pirates, like Lafitte, as well. And a pirate’s ship, upon receiving this piece of paper, becomes a “privateer.” Privateers are defined as “an armed ship owned and officered by private individuals holding a government commission and authorized for use in war, especially in the capture of enemy merchant shipping.”
(Remember this last bit. We’ll circle back to it later.)
From the year 1243 all the way up until 1856, issuing letters of marque to dangerous criminals was quite common in France, Spain, England, and even here in the United States, because why not? Sounds like a great idea!
Letters allowed the privateer to capture an “enemy vessel,” bring a case to an Admiralty Court, and possibly gain ownership of their new prize. It also gave the privateer permission to cross international borders for the purpose of “reprisals” against pretty much anything the government considered an injury or insult.
The first of these “Privateer Commissions” (old timey talk for “doin’ the government’s dirty work”) were issued in England in 1243 by King Henry III. His privateers were a very select few, sent to capture the king’s enemies at sea in return for half of the valuables on board. The other half went to the crown. By the 1560’s, the French, Spanish, and Dutch also had their own hired sea thugs.
The most famous of privateer captains at that time was Sir Francis Drake, who looks less skeptical in portraits than Lafitte did. On top of completing the second circumnavigation of the globe ever, Drake ushered in an era of violent conflicts with the Spanish off the coasts of the Americas. And, in true monarch fashion, Queen Elizabeth I handled it by denouncing his actions…while still taking her share of his profits.
By 1604 Spain felt like a global punching bag, taking beatings on all sides from English and Dutch privateers. This was when Hugo Grotius wrote a seminal work on international law, “Of the Law of Prize and Booty.” This treatise was actually a defense of Holland’s privateering actions against the Spanish crown. And, given that every other empire was doing it, all the monarchs of the other nations decided simply not to talk about it. After all, not even hypocritical rulers wish to look like hypocritical rulers.
“Okay, Doug. So if everyone was doing it, then why did the practice come to an end?”
I’m glad that you asked. You see, at the end of the Crimean War several nations met in Paris to finally denounce the use of privateering by signing The Paris Declaration of 1856. However, one nation was suspiciously absent. Can you guess who?
That’s right! It was the United States! In fact, Article 1 (section VIII) of our constitution still lists issuing “letters of marque and reprisal” as one of the enumerated powers of Congress. And five short years after the rest of the world said, “Let’s stop hiring pirates,” both the Union and the Confederacy made use of privateer vessels. (More on that in another post.)
To this day the article hasn’t been taken out.
Anyway, fun fact for any steampunk fans out there: AIRSHIP pirates were a real thing? It’s true! During World War II, a private company out of Sunnyvale, California, flew a commercial class blimp called the Resolute to hunt submarines. So, how were these blimp-riders pirates? They were a.) armed civilians, b.) on an armed craft, c.) bombing vessels from the air, and d.) were never issued letters of marque and reprisal. So….what else would you call them?”
Now that you know a bit more about being a pirate, some of our upcoming tales of pirate shenanigans will be a lot less confusing.
