"Privateer Action off Peru 1801 " Topic

"Accounts of the Age of Fighting Sail, whether factual or fictional, are noticeably sparse as regards the activities of privateers, yet they played a vital role in the wars of the period. Essentially commercial ventures, individual or syndicate-owners were granted authorisation by their governments, by means of a "Letter of Marque" to arm vessels and wage war upon the enemy. There were obvious economic advantages for the governments – the financial risks were carried by the owners, who were remunerated from the value of the prizes they captured. With profit as the driving motive, privateers aimed at capture, ideally in an undamaged state, of unarmed or lightly armed enemy commercial vessels and they generally avoided combat with regular naval forces. The typical privateer was a small, lightly-armed vessel, powerful enough to overwhelm its typical targets, but fast enough to escape from any naval craft larger than themselves. The practice emerged in the late 16th Century, when the Dutch "Sea Beggars" were a critical factor in the war of liberation against the Spanish. It was to be widely employed, often on a vast scale, by all maritime nations in the conflicts of the next two and a half centuries. The border between privateering and piracy was often a very blurred one and the practice was all but finally banned by international agreement in the Declaration of Paris in 1856…"

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