PRIVATEER, the name applied in time of war to a ship owned by a private individual, which under government permission, expressed by a letter of marque, makes war on the ship ping of a hostile power. To make war on an enemy without this commission, or on the ship ping of a nation not specified in it, is piracy.
Privateering was abolished by mutual agree ment among European nations, except Spain, by the Declaration of Paris in 1856; but the United States of America refused to sign the treaty, except on condition that all private prop erty at sea, not contraband, should be exempt from capture. This °Marcy)) or °American)) amendment, as it was called, was not accepted. This doctrine was again affirmed by the United States delegates to the Peace Conference at The Hague in 1898, but was again rejected by the European powers. It is doubtful, however, how far the abolition of privateering would stand in a general war, for it is the natural resource of a nation whose regular navy is too weak to make head against the maritime power of the enemy, especially when the latter offers the temptation of a wealthy' commerce. It was usual for the country on whose behalf the pri vateers carried on war to take security for their duty respecting the rights of neutrals and allies, and their observing generally the law of nations. In the wars of 1793-1814 many English pri vateers were afloat. But in the same period no less than 10,871 English ships, with over $5,000,000,000, were taken by French °corsairs)); the Breton privateer Surcouf took, in two months of 1807, prizes worth $1,456,250. At the American Revolution the new republic fully realized the advantage of its position in preying on the mercantile marine of Great Britain; and in the War of 1812 British commerce suffered severely at the hands of American privateers, of which it was computed that some 250 were afloat. During the American Civil the
Confederate States offered letters of marque to persons of all countries, but no admittedly for eign vessels were so commissioned. During the same period the Congress of the United States empowered the President to grant com missions to privateers, but none such were granted. The Confederate cruisers were at first regarded in the North as mere pirates; and the °Alabama Claims)) originated in the charge against Great Britain of allowing the departure of privateers from British ports, where they were fitted out illegally.
The European War produced a new form of privateering, armed with torpedoes, guns and floating mines. The operations of such craft were confined for a while to enemy coast objectives and the waters of adjacent °barred zones)); but the voyage of the German com mercial submarine Deutschland from Kiel, Ger many, to Baltimore, Md., a distance of 4,180 miles, in 1916, and her safe return to Kiel, showed a startling menace to the world's ship ping. It demonstrated that the new kind of under-sea craft could cruise in safety a long distance from a home base. The greatest feat of the U-boat type, up to that time, occurred in May and June 1918, when a number of such craft sank many vessels off the Atlantic coast of the United States.