Quotes About Privateers

Privateers, military contractors - these aren't pirates. They have bosses. Real pirates are sellswords on missions of their own making.

Well what would you expect?" she sputtered. "They can call themselves privateers, but we all know they're just pirates with papers.

letters of marque;

Well what would you expect?" she sputtered. "They can call themselves privateers, but we all know they're just pirates with papers.

As many Republicans had predicted, the French had retaliated against the Jay Treaty by allowing their privateers to prey on American ships carrying contraband cargo bound for British ports. With Napoleon emerging as the new French military strongman, Hamilton had little doubt that his troops would spread despotism across Europe.

The common class of mankind are actuated by no nobler principle than that of self-interest; this and this alone determines all adventurers in privateers: the owners, as well as those whom they employ.

I think experience has shown that privateers have done more toward distressing the trade of our enemies, and furnishing these States with necessaries, than Continental Ships of the same force.

As a CEO, I had significant exposure to private equity, enough that I had in no way bought into the media's caricature: rapacious privateers who destroy companies.

It is to the last degree distressing to contemplate the state and establishment of our navy... unless the private emolument of individuals in our navy is made superior to that in privateers, it never can become respectable; it never will become formidable. And without a respectable navy - alas, America!

Robert Surcouf was the most famous of France's eighteenth-century privateers who, based on Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, grew rich on English plunder before retiring to his native St Malo. Renowned for his chivalry towards prisoners, in France he is perhaps best remembered for the reply he gave a captive officer who admonished him for fighting for money rather than, as the British did, for honour. 'Each of us fights,' admitted Surcouf, 'for what he lacks most.

English Pirates Like the Netherlands, England was a Protestant country threatened by the Catholic might of Spain at sea and France on land. As things stood in the second half of the 16th century, the English crown had nothing to lose by encouraging private ship-owners to make a living out of pirating the slow and heavy Spanish merchant ships returning from South America laden with gold and silver.