The Privateer Schooner

The Continental Navy never had more than a few dozen ships at sea. The real American war on British trade was fought by privateers — privately owned vessels carrying a letter of marque from Congress or a state that let them take enemy merchantmen and keep the proceeds. Congress began issuing the commissions in March 1776 and signed nearly 1,700 before the war ended.

The favored hull was the schooner: fore-and-aft rigged, fast on a reach, shallow enough to run into a Chesapeake creek or a Massachusetts cove ahead of a frigate. A crew of thirty could take a prize worth more than any of them would earn in a lifetime.

By the war's end American privateers had captured something over 2,000 British vessels. Insurers in London noticed before Parliament did.

The schooner leans into the wind with both sails full and her lee rail almost in the water, a yellow rattlesnake pennant snapping from the mainmast. The sea is a slow green swell; the sky is most of the picture, a bank of storm cloud with a rip of gold at the horizon where a square-rigger — prize or pursuer — shows as a speck of white. The eye goes from the flag to the sail to that distant ship and back.