Privateer, a ship owned by a private individual, which under government permission, expressed by a letter of marque, makes
war on the shipping of a hostile power. To make war on an enemy without this commission, or on the shipping of a nation not specified in it, is piracy. 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 War the Confederate States offered letters of marque to persons of all countries, but no admittedly foreign vessels were so commissioned. During the same period the Congress
of the United States empowered the President to grant commissions 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 charge was fully sustained, it being shown before the Geneva Tribunal that the Alabama and other so-called Confederate ships were really British.
Entry from
Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.