Privateers and Privateering

by Edward Phillips Statham

There is no disputing the humanity of this American privateer skipper, if the tale be true; but one would be disposed to wonder what his owners said to him about the business. They might want to know what he meant by allowing a Welshman to score off him by means of a pious fraud! A privateer skipper, however religiously disposed, should not put to sea without his sense of humour.

"A still more forcible illustration of the humanity of American privateersmen," says Mr. Maclay (page 16), "is had early in 1782, when the private armed sloop Lively, Captain D. Adams, of Massachusetts, rescued the officers and crew of the British frigate Blonde, which had been wrecked on a barren and desolate island. The treatment which all American prisoners, and especially privateersmen, had received at the hands of the British would have almost justified the commander of the Lively in leaving these shipwrecked mariners to their fate. But the American jack tar is a generous fellow, and nothing appeals so strongly to his compassion as a fellow-seaman in distress, and on this occasion the people of the Lively extended every assistance to their enemies and brought them safely into port."

Really, they would have been no better than pirates if they had left them there. There does not appear to be any reason for supposing that American privateersmen were either more or less scrupulous than their British cousins; there was always plunder in view on both sides, and, if plunder could be obtained without fighting, so much the better.

The editor of De Bow's Commercial Review (vol. i., page 518, June 1846), in a note appended to an article upon privateering, says: "Privateering constitutes a separate chapter in the laws of nations. Every nation has resorted to this method of destroying the commerce of the enemy, without questioning for a moment their right of doing so. Many have affected to consider it, after all, but legalised piracy, and calculated to blunt the finer feelings of justice and sear the heart to noble sentiments. We are at a loss, ourselves, to understand how the occupation of a mere privateer can be reconciled with any of the higher feelings of our nature: an occupation whose whole end and purpose is pillage upon the high seas and pecuniary gain out of the fiercest bloodshed. The love of country, patriotic self-devotion, and ardour, have no place in such concerns.... It cannot be doubted, that men estimable in other respects have been found in the pursuit of privateering; but exceptions of this kind are rare, and could not, we think, occur again, in the improved moral sense of mankind."

With these preliminary remarks, let us now recount the doings of some of the American privateersmen, commencing with Silas Talbot.

Captain—or Colonel—Silas Talbot

"The Life and Surprising Adventures of Captain Silas Talbot; containing a Curious Account of the Various Changes and Gradations of this Extraordinary Character." Such is the title of a small volume published in America about the year 1803; and the editor states that the bulk of the information contained therein was communicated personally by Talbot, and has since been substantially confirmed from various quarters.

Silas Talbot, we learn, was born at Dighton, Mass., about the year 1752, and commenced his career at sea as cabin-boy. At the age of twenty-four, however, he blossoms into a captain in the U.S. Army—or the rebel army, according to British notions—in the year 1776; and by virtue, we must suppose, of his nautical training, he was placed in command of a fireship at New York, and soon after promoted to the rank of major—but still with naval duties. He speedily attracted attention as a daring and ingenious officer, and was very successful in several enterprises, the most notable being the conquest and capture of a well-armed stationary British vessel, moored in the east passage off Rhode Island. He made the attack at night, and devised an ingenious plan for breaching the high boarding-nettings of the Britisher, fixing at the bowsprit end of his sloop a small anchor, which, being forcibly rammed into the net by the impetus of the vessel, tore it away. The attack was devised as a surprise, but the approach of the gallant Talbot was observed, and it was under a heavy fire that he and his men succeeded in their desperate enterprise.

In 1779, having meanwhile been promoted to the rank of colonel, he commenced his career as a privateer commander. The British had a considerable number of private ships of war afloat on the American coast at that time, and Talbot was placed in command of the Argo, a sloop of under 100 tons, armed with twelve 6-pounders, and carrying 60 men. She was very heavily sparred—with one mast, of course, and an immense mainsail, the main boom being very long and thick. She was steered with a long tiller, had very high bulwarks, a wide stern, and looked like a clumsy Albany trader; we are told, however, that "her bottom was her handsomest part," which is only another way of saying that, with her big spars, she was, in spite of her uncouth appearance, a swift and handy craft.

In this little stinging wasp Talbot set forth, and, after one or two indecisive skirmishes, he encountered the King George, a privateer commanded by one Hazard, a native of Rhode Island, who had been very busy. Captain Hazard had been greatly esteemed, until he elected to fight on the British side, "for the base purpose of plundering his neighbours and old friends"; after which he was naturally regarded with the bitterest hatred, and Talbot approached to the attack, no doubt, with a grim determination to put a stop to the depredations of the renegade.