PRIVATEER, an armed vessel belonging to a private owner, commissioned by a belligerent State to carry on operations of war.
The commission is known as letters of marque. Acceptance of such a commission by a British subject is forbidden by the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870. Privateering is now a matter or much less importance owing to the Declaration of Paris, 1856 (q.v.), by which it was abolished. The declaration binds only the powers who were signatories or who afterwards assented, and those only when engaged in war with one another. Privateers stand in a posi tion between that of a public ship of war and a merchant vessel, and the raising of merchant vessels to the status of war-ships has in recent wars given rise to so much difficulty in distinguishing between volunteer war ships and privateers that the subject was made one of those for settlement by the Second Hague Conference (1907). By Convention vii. a converted merchant ship cannot have the status of a war ship unless it is placed under the direct authority, immediate control and responsibility of the power the flag of which it flies (art. I ). Converted merchant ships must bear the external marks which distinguish the war ships of their nation ality (art. 2). The commander must be in the service of the State and duly commissioned, and his name must figure on the list of the officers of the fighting fleet (art. 3). The crew must be subject to military discipline (art. 4). A converted merchant ship must observe the laws and customs of war (art. 5) ; and such conver sion must be announced in the list of war ships of the belligerent country.
The effective use of privateers made by the United States in the Revolutionary War and the War of bred reluctance on its part prior to the Civil War to agree to foreign proposals to abandon the practice. The United States, however, was willing to accede to the Declaration of Paris upon the condition that the right to capture enemy property, other than contraband, on the high seas should be abolished, but such an amendment was unac ceptable to the European powers. In 1863, during the Civil War, Congress authorized the president to commission privateers, but the power was not to be exercised unless the Confederate States were successful in commissioning privateers in Europe. No occa sion appeared for the commissioning of privateers. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, despite the fact that neither Spain nor the United States had acceded to the Declaration of Paris, no use was made of privateers. The rise of the United States to the position of an important naval power, together with the realization that privateering belongs to the warfare of an earlier day, has disposed the United States to cease to incline favourably towards recognition of the practice as a method of modern warfare. Under the Constitution the issuance of letters of marque and reprisal is forbidden to the States and is vested solely in the national Government.