Letter of marque
A letter of marque and reprisal was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury. Captured naval prizes were judged before the government's admiralty court for condemnation and transfer of ownership to the privateer.
A common practice among Europeans from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century, cruising for enemy prizes with a letter of marque was considered an honorable calling that combined patriotism and profit. Such legally authorized privateering contrasted with unlicensed captures of random ships, known as piracy, which was universally condemned. In practice, the differences between privateers and pirates were sometimes slight, even merely a matter of interpretation.
The terms "letter of marque" and "privateer" were sometimes used to describe the ships which typically operated under the marque-and-reprisal licences. In this context, a letter of marque was a lumbering, square-rigged cargo carrier that might pick up a prize if the opportunity arose in its normal commerce. In contrast, the term privateer generally referred to a fighting vessel, fore-and-aft rigged, fast, and weatherly.
Letters of marque allowed governments to fight their wars using mercenary private captains and sailors in place of their own navies as a measure to save time and money. Instead of building, funding, and maintaining a navy in times of peace, governments would wait until the start of a war to issue letters of marque to privateers, who financed their own ships in expectation of prize money.
Etymology and history of nomenclature
Marque derives from the Old English mearc, which is from the Germanic *mark-, which means boundary, or boundary marker. This is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *merǵ-, meaning boundary, or border. The French marque is from the Provençal language marca, which is from marcar, also Provençal, meaning to seize as a pledge.According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of "letters of marque and reprisal" was in an English statute in 1354 during the reign of King Edward III. The phrase referred to "a licene granted by a sovereign to a subject, authorizing him to make reprisals on the subjects of a hostile state for injuries alleged to have been done to him by the enemy's army".
Early history
During the Middle Ages, armed private vessels enjoying their sovereign's tacit consent, if not always an explicit formal commission, regularly raided shipping of other states, as in the case of the English Sir Francis Drake's attacks on Spanish shipping. Queen Elizabeth I took a share of the prizes. Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius's 1604 seminal work on international law, De Iure Praedae, was an advocate's brief defending Dutch raids on Spanish and Portuguese shipping.King Henry III of England first issued what later became known as privateering commissions in 1243. These early licences were granted to specific individuals to seize the King's enemies at sea in return for splitting the proceeds between the privateers and the Crown.
The letter of marque and reprisal was documented in 1295, 50 years after wartime privateer licenses were first issued. According to Grotius, letters of marque and reprisal were akin to a "private war", a concept alien to modern sensibilities but related to an age when the ocean was lawless and all merchant vessels sailed armed for self-defense. A reprisal involved seeking the sovereign's permission to exact private retribution against some foreign prince or subject. The earliest instance of a licensed reprisal recorded in England was in the year 1295 under the reign of King Edward I. The notion of reprisal, and behind it that just war involved avenging a wrong, was associated with the letter of marque until 1620 in England. To apply for such a letter, a shipowner had to submit to the Admiralty Court an estimate of actual losses incurred.
Licensing privateers during wartime became widespread in Europe by the 16th century, when most countries began to enact laws regulating the granting of letters of marque and reprisal. Such business could be very profitable; during the eight years of the American Revolutionary War, ships from the tiny island of Guernsey carrying letter of marque captured French and American vessels to the value of £900,000. Privateers from Guernsey continued to operate during the Napoleonic Wars.
Although privateering commissions and letters of marque were originally distinct legal concepts, such distinctions became purely technical by the 18th century. Article I of the United States Constitution, for instance, states that "The Congress shall have Power To... grant Letters of marque and reprisal...", without separately addressing privateer commissions.
During the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812, it was common to distinguish verbally between privateers on the one hand, and armed merchantmen, which were referred to as "letters of marque", on the other, though both received the same commission. The Sir John Sherbrooke was a privateer; the Sir John Sherbrooke was an armed merchantman. The East India Company arranged for letters of marque for its East Indiamen ships, such as the Lord Nelson. They did not need permission to carry cannons to fend off warships, privateers, and pirates on their voyages to India and China but, the letters of marque provided that, should they have the opportunity to take a prize, they could do so without being guilty of piracy. Similarly, the Earl of Mornington, an East India Company packet ship of only six guns, also carried a letter of marque.
Letters of marque and privateers are largely credited for the age of Elizabethan exploration, because privateers were used to explore the seas. Under the Crown, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Martin Frobisher sailed the seas as privateers; their expedition reports helped shape the age of Elizabethan exploration.
In July 1793, the East Indiamen, Triton, and Warley participated in the capture of Pondichéry by maintaining a blockade of the port. Afterwards, while sailing to China, the same three East Indiamen participated in an action in the Straits of Malacca. They came upon a French frigate, with some six or seven British prizes, with a crew replenishing her water casks ashore. The three British vessels immediately gave chase. The frigate fled towards the Sunda Strait. The Indiamen were able to catch up with a number of the prizes, and, after a few cannon shots, were able to retake them. Had they not carried letters of marque, such behaviour might well have qualified as piracy. Similarly, on 10 November 1800, the East Indiaman Phoenix captured the French privateer General Malartic, under Jean-Marie Dutertre, an action made legal by a letter of marque. Additionally, vessels with a letter of marque were exempt from having to sail in convoy, and nominally their crew members were exempt, during a voyage, from impressment.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Dart and Kitty, British privateers, spent some months off the coast of Sierra Leone hunting slave-trading vessels.
Applying for, and legal effect of, a letter of marque
The procedure for issuing letters of marque, and the issuing authority, varied by time and circumstance. In colonial British America, for instance, colonial governors issued such letters in the name of the Crown. During the American War of Independence, authorization shifted from individual state legislatures, followed by both the states and the Continental Congress, and lastly, after ratification of the Constitution, only Congress authorized and the President signed letters of marque. A shipowner applied for such a letter of marque by stating the name, description, tonnage, force of the vessel, name and residence of the owner, and intended number of crew. The shipowner tendered a bond promising strict observance of the country's laws and treaties, and of international laws and customs. The United States granted the commission to the vessel, not to its captain, often for a limited time or specified area, and stated the enemy upon whom attacks were permitted. For example, during the Second Barbary War, President James Madison authorized the brig Grand Turk to cruise against "Algerine vessels, public or private, goods and effects, of or belonging to the Dey of Algiers". This particular commission was never put to use, as it was issued July 3, 1815, the same day the treaty was signed, ending the U.S. involvement in the war.In Britain in the 18th century, the High Court of Admiralty issued Letters of Marque. It was customary for the proposed privateer to pay a deposit or bond, possibly £1,500 as surety for good behaviour. The details of the ship, including tonnage, crew and weapons were recorded. The ownership of these ships was often split into shares. Prizes were assessed and valued with profits split in pre-agreed proportions among the government, the owners, and the captain and crew.
A letter of marque and reprisal in effect converted a private merchant vessel into a naval auxiliary. A commissioned privateer enjoyed the protection and was subject to the obligations of the laws of war. If captured, the crew was entitled to honorable treatment as prisoners of war, while without the licence they were deemed mere pirates "at war with all the world," criminals who were properly hanged.
For this reason, enterprising maritime raiders commonly took advantage of "flag of convenience" letters of marque, shopping for cooperative governments to license and legitimize their depredations. French/Irishman Captain Luke Ryan and his lieutenants in just over two years commanded six vessels under the flags of three different countries and on opposite sides in the same war. Likewise the notorious Lafitte brothers in New Orleans cruised under letters of marque secured by bribery from corrupt officials of tenuous Central American governments, to cloak plunder with a thin veil of legality.