Ok, so I've done a little moseying about on the Internet with regards to the topic, and in addition to seeing some conflicting views, the fact is that Googling really isn't the most authoritative source of information. So, I'd like to appeal to any experts here in the hopes of gaining some insight of the subject.
A few questions:
I have read both that privateering was very ineffective due to being nigh-impossible to police and actually control, and that it was very effective. Which of these is true? Is it somewhere in the middle?
What lead to the rise of privateering? How likely were pirates to actually gain official sanction from a state?
What caused the downfall of privateering? There are pirates today, what prevents privateering from existing? Age of Sail navies outclassed the pirates of their time, is the imbalance of power between their contemporary counterparts that much larger?
And a couple somewhat related questions:
Modern combat ships far outstrip most anything smaller than them, particularly in respects to speed due to inertia. Was this also true of ships-of-the-line and large frigates? Can a sloop or cutter realistically have any kind of chance against a large frigate, even if the goal is simply survival? In essence, is Bigger really Better?
How common was boarding versus sinking? How effective was each?
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
The answer to your first and second questions is the same- where, and by whom? Ignoring pre- gunpowder and post- ironclad eras entirely, that's still four and a half centuries and a world full of ocean. So the answer is, it varied.
The essential difference between a pirate and a privateer is the sanction of the state. A privateer is a citizen who the government contracts to fight on their behalf, although frequently the privateer is doing so for their own reasons; a pirate is just a sea thief. A privateer has a contract, which can be revoked in cases of bad conduct in which case they then become liable to treatment as a pirate. That much is a constant.
If the government happens not to bother investigating what gets done in it's name, or sells privateering commissions to Mad Fred the Knife Artist and his brother Kutyerthroatt, then privateering can get pretty messy. Of course, one government may not recognise the legitimacy of a commission issued by another.
Pirates were by no means all as bad as they were all made out to be- but it's only the difference between a well organised underworld operation and a gang of random murderers. By definition, a pirate is an outlaw. Even the most inherently noble character would find their standards start to slip in that situation, and given that so many of them were scum to begin with, well...
Woth noting that very few pirates actually got rich. To make much money out of it, you had to be much more prudent than most of them were. You had to know how to save money, in a ship that is by definition fill of thieves, and you had to know when to quit, and how to disappear.
The men who got rich out of piracy, and there were some, were not the pirates; they were the fences the pirates sold their stolen goods to. Thomas Modyford, for instance, the governor of Jamaica when Morgan was active, did spectacularly well.
The same man could be a pirate one year and a privateer the next, although that was much less likely than going the other way.
Governments tend to resort to privateering precisely because their control is weak. Allowing the citizens to do the hard work is the easier option, and any government which has to descend to that sort of option is not doing well.
For difficulty of control, you would have to look no further than the Elizabethan and early Jacobite era when Elizabeth and James VI and I were frequently in diplomatic trouble trying to control their privateers- who had the very nasty habit of not greatly caring who they attacked, enemy nation or friendly, or their own countrymen on occasion.
However, when the situation blew out of control, at least two thirds of the ships which sailed to meet the Armada were technically privateers, privately owned ships under contract to the crown.
Don't forgwet how much the sturcture of a modern state owes to the need to support armies and navies; ths is the time when that structure is growing, passing out of the private charge of the individuals responsible to the nation.
Privateering, allowing private citizens to project power on the state's behalf, and allowing them incentives by it, was always an interim solution until the state could do it on it's own account. Piracy, on the other hand, was more of a perennial problem.
Privateering survived in Britain longer than it should have out of respect for tradition. It survived longer than it should have in France, Spain and America out of prolonged governmental weakness, in the American case artificially so.
As for warships beating pirates inevitably, there are a number of english- really, the sweepings of the streets of a dozen nations, with a moderate proprtion of english- privateers who would disagree, particularly Henry Morgan, who once hijacked the royal warship sent to arrested him for his own use as the flagship of an armada of buccaneers. That, however,was still the early days.
The true ship of the line dates to the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 1650's, and is a complex beast. An absurdity such as a privateer that size could not count on being consistently lucky enough to pay it's upkeep and maintenance, never mind the wages of the crew. Still less a pirate.
A frigate was not actually that much smaller than a ship of the line; what it was is substantially less heavily loaded. There were 1500-ton frigates carring 38 18-pounders plus quarterdeck guns and carronades, and stores for crews of 250, whereas a ship of the line might be only a thousand tons displacement larger- not even a factor of two- and have thirty-four thirty-two pounders and thirty-eight twenty-four pounders (if french), and stores for a crew of six hundred and fifty.
Chance of a sloop or cutter against a larger- good, to escape, particularly a cutter with their different sail arrangement. They could sail much closer to the wind and outmanoeuvre a square rigged ship, also pass through much shallower water. Running is a realistic possibility, combat is not.
It is hard to sink a wooden warship with solid shot; killing the crew is much more common. Many more ships sank after battle than during, from the effects of wind and wave on the damage recieved- with too few men and those too hurt or tired to do damage control- rather than coming apart there and then.
Battering the target into a state of inability to fight back then boarding is how you do it against an actively resisting target. Of course, as a pirate or privateer, that tends to get you a mangled ship with reduced resale value, and dead passengers who you could have ransomed.
Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Modern combat ships far outstrip most anything smaller than them, particularly in respects to speed due to inertia. Was this also true of ships-of-the-line and large frigates? Can a sloop or cutter realistically have any kind of chance against a large frigate, even if the goal is simply survival? In essence, is Bigger really Better?
It really depends on the circumstances. In a chase action in coastal waters, a cutter has advantages as 11th C. Remnant described. However, in a straight open-sea chase, the larger vessel benefits from its far larger spread of canvas and its longer hull, while its larger, longer-ranged guns allow it to engage before it has fully caught up to the cutter. In general, though, a line-ship would fare less well than a frigate or other smaller warship, simply because the line-ship's hull is built not for speed, but to carry and employ the tremendous weight of its guns - this means a wide beam and full entry. Frigates, sloops-of-war, and corvettes were better suited for speed because they could be designed for it, and indeed speed was a more important consideration for frigates as they were meant to serve in the same role as the modern-day cruiser.
It's worth noting that both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy didn't employ many line-ships or heavy frigates against pirates and slavers, but rather schooners, brigs, and sloops with fine hulls and a lot of canvas. This was a sensible move as their adversaries were employing small ships built for extreme speed.
A good reference on the kinds of ships employed by and against privateers and slavers would be Howard Chapelle's History of American Sailing Ships. Your local library may have it, or get it for you via ILL, as it is not an obscure book.
