While it is accepted that rebel privateers combined war with profit to make up for a lack of Continental warships, it is less recognized that in the later years of the war privateers became crucial to the British war effort.1 Privateers played a part in the long siege of Gibraltar. The Rock’s merchants had at least seven privateers based there from 1777 to 1783. In February 1782, the privateer Mercury delivered welcome supplies to the garrison, demonstrating that privateers could be a supplement to navy transports.
In past wars, British privateers had appeared when private ships of war and armed merchantmen were outfitted to sail under Admiralty licenses to seize enemy property. Letters of marque were issued by the High Court of Admiralty, in which a ship’s captain had to identify his ship and post a bond.2 The letters were meant to enhance armed trading voyages so that ships might be able to take a prize in addition to selling their cargo. Privateer licenses were also given to purpose-built warships that were fully armed and cruised extensively. These private warships were further divided between those that cruised in ‘deep water’, throughout the Atlantic, and those smaller vessels that sailed in coastal bays and rivers.
During the colonial wars, privateering had been a business enterprise meant to offer a financial return on the investment of the ship’s owners. Prizes had to be presented to Admiralty courts sitting throughout the empire, which decided how the prize’s proceeds were to be distributed between the crown, officers, crew and ship owners. The 1768 Vice Admiralty Court Act created four district courts in the North American colonies, located at New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston, adding to the existing, but remote, court at Halifax.3 The Admiralty courts also helped customs officials to prosecute smugglers like those in Rhode Island, and they were the one place where the rights of sailors were recognized and protected. Some colonial critics claimed the Admiralty courts were high handed because they did not use juries, but such a procedure would have jammed the courts and made them inoperable.
British American privateers were only gradually accepted as an essential part of the British naval effort. They had been regulated since a 1692 statute, chiefly because privateers competed with the Royal Navy for skilled seamen. Five years later, Maryland’s Governor Francis Nicholson experienced a ‘great encouragement for illegal traders and privateers, or rather pirates, which causes many men to run from the king’s ships in the convoys and from merchant ships’.4 He made certain that privateer owners post substantial bonds for good behavior, which were forfeited if looting occurred. Piratical behavior by privateers was not tolerated because privateering laws were enforced by the world’s most extensive naval police force, the Royal Navy.
At first in the Revolution, the licensing of Loyalist privateers was ambiguous because in the eyes of Parliament, the rebels were technically not an enemy, remaining His Majesty’s subjects. This delayed privateering, but could be circumvented by using the 1775 Prohibitory of Trade Act, which authorized the seizure of goods carried by the ships of the thirteen colonies. It prohibited the American colonies from ‘all manner of trade and commerce’ and declared that any ships found trading with the colonies ‘shall be forfeited to his Majesty, as if the same were the ships and effects of open enemies’.5 This allowed for the Roebuck’s prize activity in the early years of the war, when the Royal Navy had little competition from privateers, taking the bulk of rebel prizes.
Before Parliament withdrew its opposition to privateering, Admiral James Young, Commander of the Leeward Islands Station in English Harbor, Antigua, felt it was his duty to prevent merchant privateers from sailing. He feared that they might act with the rebels or prey on the ships of then neutral France and Spain, which would cause them to declare war on Britain. This actually led Antigua’s merchants, who owned many privateers, to have Young arrested and sued. By April 1777, this was no longer a problem as Parliament had withdrawn its opposition and the Admiralty was commissioning privateers, even in Bermuda and the Leeward Islands.6 In occupied places, privateers were now licensed by royal governors to take rebel prizes as had been done in the past.
The Royal Navy was not anxious to work with privateers. In the race to recruit seamen, privateers had advantages over it. Privateers’ amount of prize money was probably larger as they focused only on obtaining prizes, while the navy ships had limited time for such diversions.7 Still, drawbacks existed for recruits. Crews of private warships received no wages and most privateers deducted the cost of their food and medical care from their prize money. Privateer ships were built for speed, thus usually smaller and overcrowded – conditions that spread vermin. A seaman who served on a privateer had to gamble that a string of valuable prizes would be taken. In contrast, life in the navy was more secure as a seaman’s livelihood did not depend on circumstance, for even if his ship was lost or he were taken prisoner, he still was compensated.
Eventually, Loyalist privateers became the wild card in the makeup of British naval forces, supplementing the Royal Navy in maintaining the long-standing blockade. In North America, privateers rarely came from distant Britain, rather appearing from closer Bermuda, Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia, and New York. The Chesapeake remained an important place to recruit privateer crews. In 1776, the privateer Rodney recruited its crew around Deal Island, Somerset County, Maryland.8
While rebel naval forces came to act almost exclusively as privateers and did considerable damage to British merchant shipping, the balance sheet of prizes favored the Royal Navy supported by Loyalist privateers. They destroyed over 1,000 rebel vessels and crews. An American historian has concluded that ‘British privateers and warships had a greater impact on the American economy than did the American privateers on the economy of Great Britain.’9
In North America, New York was the most consistent origin of Loyalist privateers. Its merchants had become experienced as privateers during the Seven Years’ War, when they had obtained letters of marque and purchased shares in privateering ventures. The city was occupied by the British from its conquest by the Howes in 1776 until the very end of the war, and it became a magnet for Loyalist refugees. It was the seat of an Admiralty court to clear prizes and its careening yard and maritime enterprises supported privateers. Robert Bayard, descendant of a Huguenot family and judge of the Admiralty court, authorized privateers broadly
to attack, surprise, seize and take all ships and vessels, goods, wares and merchandises, chattels and effects whatever, belonging to the inhabitants of the said colonies now in rebellion, and all ships and vessels with their cargos, apparel and furniture, belonging to our subjects in Great Britain and Ireland, which shall be found of from the said colonies.10
In the early years of the war, New York’s merchant community claimed to have suffered a lost opportunity because of Parliament’s Prohibitory of Trade Act. These restrictions were gradually whittled away by Sir Henry Clinton and Parliament, so that a New York privateer could go to Delaware Bay to support Sussex County Loyalists. By the summer of 1777, members of the Chesapeake Goodrich family – Bartlet, William and Bridger – were reunited in New York and joined Willie and Robert Shedden to form Shedden & Goodrich, a company dedicated to privateering and supply of the British. A year later, the new commander of the New York naval station, Rear Admiral James Gambier, was praised for his support of privateers. It was said, his ‘astonishing exertion to the private ships of war’ and ‘the success of the enterprisers … seems indeed to have given a hard blow to the rebellion.’11
New York Governor William Tryon sought permission to issue commissions and letters of marque for privateers, as he could charge a fee for issuing them. From March 1777, he licensed 185 privateers and five months later, he was given the authority to provide more. Even the ministry’s peace commissioners authorized an expansion of privateering to meet the French challenge on the high seas. By 1779, Tryon was promising generous bounties for ‘seamen, shipcarpenters and other landsmen’ to man privateers.12 Between August 1778 and April 1779, 121 privateers were fitted out in New York to challenge the rebels. As a result, the number of ship’s libels taken by privateers at New York’s Vice Admiralty Court rose to two-thirds of the total, the remainder belonging to the Royal Navy.
In May 1779, Sir George Collier’s expedition to Chesapeake Bay contained many New York privateers. When Collier returned from the Chesapeake to New York, however, he found that his seamen were deserting to privateers because of lucrative bounties. To make up for the competition, New York City merchants were willing to donate ships to the Royal Navy. Still, crews would remain more difficult to come by than ships. In 1780, regulars of the 82nd Regiment were lured to a privateer because they were offered a share in the prizes.13 As a result, inspections were put into effect to prevent regulars and Royal Navy sailors from joining privateer crews.
A few months after Colliers’ expedition, the New York privateer Irish Hero came into the Chesapeake on its own, but while chasing prizes it ran aground on the Northampton coast and the crew set her afire. The plucky captain and some of the crew set out in a longboat and eventually made New York. At the same time, the privateer Charlotte arrived in New York with the captured prize Success, taken off the Virginia Capes. The overall take of such New York privateers was estimated by Tryon at £600,000 and a list of prizes published in Rivington’s Gazette show that many came from the Chesapeake.14 New York owners of privateers, such as John Watts, John Armory and Theophilact Bache, and captains like William Bayard’s son, Samuel, profited from the goods taken by the privateers and sold in New York.15
Actually, many rebel merchant cargos ended up in British-held New York rather than their supposed destination, usually the West Indies. The diversion of rebel cargos to New York was the result of a captain deciding he could do better with the British. In 1780, Captain James Anderson, a former lieutenant in the Maryland navy, cleared Baltimore with a destination of the West Indies.16 However, once out of the bay, Anderson headed his ship for New York, sold his cargo there, and returned to the Chesapeake as a Loyalist privateer. Similarly, Captain John Stump, an assistant to supply Commissioner Henry Hollingsworth, procured flour and sailed out of the bay. He pretended that his flour had been captured en route to Boston, but actually he went to New York, where he sold the flour to the British army. Once this illicit trade was discovered, captains had to become Loyalist privateers.
Late in the war, when combat continued in New York’s waterways, special Loyalist units supplemented privateers. By 1780, a series of British blockhouses on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and at Sandy Hook served as collecting points for livestock and firewood for New York City, as well as intelligence gathering as they watched Washington’s army and supporting militia. They were garrisoned by Loyalists, many of them free blacks. In July 1780, Anthony Wayne’s Continentals were driven back from the Bull’s Ferry blockhouse, with heavy losses.
A year later, Sir Henry Clinton authorized William Luce, New Jersey Loyalist, to create a raiding force ‘for his Majesty’s Service. One Company of Able Bodied Men, to be employed in Whale Boats & other Armed Vessels.’17 They were to receive the same pay as Marines on armed vessels and be clothed and armed as Provincial forces. In 1782, they grew from 80 to 125 men, raiding by water against rebel strongholds. On January 8, they joined about 300 British regulars in attacking rebel whaleboats at New Brunswick. Another foray was authorized by the Board of the Associated Loyalists, who targeted Toms River as a nest of rebel privateers and the site of valuable salt works. On March 23, the Armed Boat Company, joined by forty Associated Loyalists, attacked the Toms River blockhouse. Several were killed and wounded on each side, but the Loyalists took the blockhouse and the bulk of the rebel garrison. Among the captives was Captain Joshua Huddy, who ultimately was hung by Loyalists, making the incident a cause célèbre to the rebels. In June, forty whites and forty blacks of the Armed Boat Company landed at Forked River and burnt homes and salt works. In March 1783, the Company numbered seventy at the East River Boat Yard and Fort Kniphausen on the Hudson, formerly Fort Washington.
From 1775, the most active Loyalist privateers were those of John Goodrich, his sons, William, John Jr., Bartlet, Bridger and Edward, and his associates in Robert Shedden’s family. Most of the six privateers in Governor Dunmore’s fleet belonged to the Goodrich family. By 1779, the Goodrich privateer fleet, now based in New York and Bermuda, was so successful in Chesapeake Bay that Virginia’s Governor Thomas Jefferson admitted that, ‘Our trade has never been so distressed since the time of Lord Dunmore.’18
The patriarch John Goodrich was a wealthy merchant and planter whose family had come to Virginia’s Norfolk–Portsmouth area in the late seventeenth century. He owned over 2,000 acres of developed land in Nansemond and Isle of Wight Counties and five town lots in Portsmouth for his residences, as well as an extensive wharf, warehouses, dry goods stores and other shops.19 By 1774, the family owned twelve trading ships, which went chiefly to the West Indies, but were also involved in costal shipping.
During the Stamp Act crisis, the Goodrich family had been as active as any Whig in protesting British efforts to regulate imperial trade. In 1774, John had been elected to the Committee of Correspondence of Norfolk and Portsmouth, which communicated with merchants in other ports and sent aid to beleaguered Boston.20 He also subscribed to the Continental Association, although this did not stop his family from continuing to smuggle British manufactures into their stores. With his adult sons, John Jr., William and Bartlett, he contracted with rebel authorities to procure gunpowder in the French or Dutch West Indies, to replace what Governor Dunmore had taken from the Williamsburg arsenal. William returned in October 1775 with the gunpowder purchased in Dutch St Eustatius, which was unloaded in North Carolina and transported overland to Williamsburg to avoid the Royal Navy. True, other Goodrich ships had gone with William, who had also made purchases to the financial advantage of the family. In January 1776, William and John Jr. were accused by a committee of violating the Continental Association, which aimed to prevent British imports, threatening confiscation of concealed manufactures.
In November 1775, however, Dunmore got wind of the Goodrich family’s gunpowder deal and he arrested John Goodrich Jr. and Goodrich’s son-in-law and partner, Robert Shedden. This led the senior Goodrich to repent the gunpowder enterprise and intervene, asking to see Dunmore. At the meeting on the Otter, Goodrich claimed ‘that he and his son had no other motive for engaging in this business but the prospect of a good freight for their vessel’.21 He offered to go to St Eustatius and purchase gunpowder for Dunmore, leaving his son William in the governor’s hands for security. Instead, William went back to St Eustatius and obtained a note for his costs in the service of Virginia and then returned to Dunmore’s custody.
Despite William’s confinement, the Goodrich family were becoming Loyalists. The senior Goodrich now agreed to work with Dunmore, offering his ships as Loyalist privateers, and in March 1776, serving as a pilot on the Otter.22 John Jr. was released, and from this moment forward the Goodrich family served as Loyalist privateers, taking prizes and raiding rebel plantations. Five of the family’s ships patrolled the coasts and rivers, in league with Royal Navy tenders, gathering provisions like pork and bacon for Dunmore. Captain Hamond advised Captain Matthew Squire to seek the advice of Bridger, John Goodrich’s younger son, who commanded a tender, in procuring fresh meat for navy ships. The Goodrichs’ ships would now be under navy supervision and he and his sons were regarded by the rebels as traitors.
The Goodrichs’ evolving Loyalism did not go unnoticed by the rebels. In revenge, the senior Goodrich and his four eldest sons would be sought out and imprisoned. When Portsmouth was taken by rebels, the Goodrich homes and property were looted and destroyed, fortifying their loyalty to the crown. Soon the extended Goodrich family of ships’ masters, wives, clerks and slaves joined the Hamond-Dunmore fleet in seven sloops.23 William was able to bring his wife and newborn child aboard one of the family’s sloops. At Gwynn’s Island, William commanded the James and sloop Lady Susan, John Sr., the Lilly and Peggy, and Bridger, the tenders, Edward, Samuel and Lady Susan.
In June 1776 near Ocracoke, North Carolina, John Sr., having taken two prizes in a rebel harbor, was unable to escape and was seized and sent to Williamsburg, where he was placed in heavy irons. He was incarcerated in several jails and finally in Charlottesville, where he met Midshipman Josias Rogers of the Roebuck, who was released as a military prisoner while Goodrich remained. John Sr. escaped from Charlottesville and eventually was picked up by HMS St Albans in Chesapeake Bay and taken to New York. He reported ‘that 130 Men from Somerset County in Maryland are now on board the Virginia enlisted into the British service … & that [he] at pleasure, could fetch of 170 more who had agreed to enter into the king’s servise’.24 Goodrich found Rogers in New York and, according to Rogers, offered him the command of his privateer fleet, although he turned him down. Whether in the Chesapeake or New York, John Sr. was a persuasive privateersman.
After Dunmore sailed to New York in August 1776, John Sr., William, Bartlet and Bridger, along with the Sheddens, were established there. However, William and Bridger would gravitate toward Bermuda. Bridger was described as ‘a stoop shouldered, genteel, well-looking young man of about twenty-four years, with a daring, bold countenance, light colored hair and a little freckly’.25 In 1776, he had captained the Molly and sailed toward Bermuda, carrying 15,000 bushels of wheat confiscated by Dunmore, which ultimately would be sent to Halifax. Off Bermuda, however, the Molly was intercepted by the Continental ship Andrew Doria, and Bridger’s heavily laden ship could not make a resistance; its crew of Loyalists and slaves was taken to Philadelphia. The captured brothers, Bridger and William, were placed in a Baltimore prison but escaped at the end of 1776. Both served briefly in the crew of the Roebuck in the spring of 1777 before going to Bermuda and conducting privateering from the mid-Atlantic. Before the war, the British island was known for the construction of sloops of speed and weatherliness, which made ideal privateers. In 1777, Bridger bought a fine Bermuda sloop and refitted her as a privateer. On his initial voyage he took five prizes, two of which belonged to Bermudians, which he brought back to the island, accusing their owners of trading with the enemy.
Meanwhile, Margaret, John Sr.’s wife, remained in Virginia at the family’s Nansemond plantation, living with her children on a modest stipend provided by the Virginia Commissioners of Sequestration.26 In 1778, she petitioned them for an increase in her stipend in order to rehire her slaves to cultivate her lands, but was refused. In May 1779, when Collier’s squadron landed at Portsmouth, the Goodrich privateers Dunmore, Hamond, Lord North and Fincastle were among the ships. Commanded by Bartlet Goodrich, the Hamond was able to carry John Jr.’s wife and children to New York. A year later, John Goodrich Sr. was back in a privateer with Gayton’s expedition to the Chesapeake and it was then that he rescued Margaret and the children and took them to New York.
After the war, John Sr. and most family members migrated to London, where Bartlet had made connections in 1778. John Sr.’s referees for his Loyalist claim indicated his service: Lord Dunmore, Captain Hamond, Sir Henry Clinton, Admiral Gambier, Admiral Collier, Admiral Arbuthnot, General Mathew, General Leslie and Captain Gayton. After a brief stay in Bristol, he moved to the port of Topsham, Devonshire, where he resided in Grove House. The war and imprisonment had taken its toll and he died in 1785. He claimed he ‘took and destroyed five hundred vessels … while giving employment to more than one thousand Americans or other Loyalists’.27
In Bermuda – where Henry Tucker, formerly of Somerset County Maryland, had continued to trade with the rebels and formed an association to boycott Bridger’s privateering – Bridger’s seizure of Bermudian vessels raised a storm of indignation.28 In 1779, Bridger’s fleet of Bermuda privateers blockaded the Chesapeake and took prizes at Fox Island. Back in Bermuda, he blatantly became engaged to Elizabeth Tucker, a kinswoman of Henry Tucker’s and the association’s opposition to his privateering momentarily became confused.
Bridger would not be the only privateer captain from Bermuda. The war would disrupt Bermuda’s traditional reliance upon trade with the rebellious North American colonies. With the appearance of new fortifications and British troops, as well as Bridger’s privateers, Bermuda’s economy was altered. As reconstituted, it depended on the proceeds of privateering to sell goods to the beefed-up British military.29 Ultimately, Bridger took so many prizes he could afford to live at elegant Goodrich Hall in Bermuda’s Orange Grove. In 1788, he sold Goodrich Hall and went to England for a prolonged visit to his family. He later returned to Bermuda, where he resided at the Bridge House, St George’s. Overall, the Goodrichs succeeded in the war, continuing the ideal of a prosperous transatlantic family.
During the British occupation of Charleston, privateers cruised as far as St Augustine. Its location, convenient to Savannah, the Bahamas and Havana, Cuba, offered opportunities for privateers. St Augustine also had an Admiralty court, where privateers sought judgements. Headed by Reverend John Forbes, the court was known for verdicts of condemnation, which meant that scarce items like foodstuffs, powder and slaves were for sale in St Augustine. Royal Navy vessels were few and on their way to other destinations. Thus, Governor Tonyn followed the example of Virginia’s Governor Dunmore by creating his own provincial navy as well as issuing letters of marque. In 1776, letters were given to Captain John Mowbray of the 10-gun Rebecca, who would later become commander of all armed vessels protecting East Florida.30
Elsewhere in the South, analysis of British privateering on Chesapeake Bay in 1776 has identified seventeen ships commanded and manned by Loyalists.31 Of those, ten were sloops and five schooners, indicating a preference for vessels suitable for close inshore combat. Their small size is further affirmed by their typical armament of two to six carriage guns. Only the sloop Fincastle, the pride of Portsmouth merchants Robert and Roger Stewart, had as many as eight to ten guns. Its career began in Dunmore’s fleet at Gwyn’s Island and it followed Dunmore to New York. In June 1779, it was one of the privateers that remained behind when Collier left and it joined Captain Richard Creyk’s Otter in raiding the Wicomico River, Virginia. At least three of the sloops and one schooner also carried an average of six swivel guns. Most of these ships were 100–250 tons. Compared to navy ships, the crews of these vessels were diminutive, ranging from a schooner of roughly ten men to a sloop with as many as twenty-four. In July, the combined crews of Joseph Wayland’s three schooners numbered only twenty, all but one described as ‘Country born’. While many Loyalist mariners were volunteers, others were pressed and those mariners signing articles on Dunmore’s vessels were officially taken into government service, receiving modest pay.
On their own, Loyalist privateers perfected hit and run tactics and frustrated the ability of rebel militia to catch them. In Maryland, County Lieutenant Joseph Dashiell noted that the port of Sinepuxent was not vulnerable because it was on Worcester County’s Atlantic side and not well known to the British. This changed in June 1777, when six Loyalist privateers appeared at Sinepuxent Inlet and captured the sloop Independence’s boat, which, unawares, had been sent out to provide them with a pilot.32 The militia were called up to oppose them, but wind caused the privateers to put to sea the next day. However, the privateers returned and were unopposed because the militia had refused to go over to guard the beach. The privateers left again but returned, still looking for a tempting target. Dashiell felt that a proper guard drafted from the militia was needed to protect the inlet from marauding.
Loyalist privateer activity increased later in the war. In 1780, Loyalist privateers attempted to seize tobacco warehouses at Benoni’s Point, Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but were driven off by Talbot County militia.33 The privateers then took possession of Matthew Tilghman’s Choptank Island and looted it. The privateer Spitefire with thirty-two oars and thirty-three men rowed up the Choptank River as far as Castle-Haven in Dorchester County and took possession of the rebel schooner Mayflower, smaller boats, cattle and sheep. Here the privateer tried to release the captives it had taken, but the militia fired on them.
In July 1780, Loyalist privateers captured two vessels at the mouth of Virginia’s Patuxent River and continued to take rebel privateers. In September, Simon Lambard, sailor on Captain John Dashiell’s schooner, The Secretary, deserted to Captain Daniel Collier’s Connecticut Loyalist privateer. A month later, the residents of Vienna, Maryland feared the ‘probable return of enemy crews from New York privateers …’34 In November, the rebel privateer Luzerne, which had escaped in previous encounters, was taken by the New York privateer Trimmer under Captain Phillips. One Baltimore merchant in particular, James Carey, found as late as 1783 that he could not return home because ‘the Chesapeake has been so blocked by New York and Bermudian [privateers] that business in Maryland has been almost annihilated.’
In 1780 in New York, Clinton approved instructions from the Board of Associated Loyalists, which encouraged privateers to attack rebel property. It read that Loyalist raiders should be provided with appropriate shipping, ‘not commanded by the King’s officers … to be manned by themselves, and that their mariners shall not be impressed into any other service’. It also said that Loyalists ‘may … form conjunct expeditions, in any quarter, with such [privateers], as may … be for the future under one general direction and regulation’.35 Here was authority for Loyalist privateers to organize raiding parties on their own initiative.
A combination of indigenous watermen, Loyalists privateers and perhaps a Royal Navy tender carried on forays against rebel plantations. As with rebel privateers in Nova Scotia, Loyalist privateers in the Chesapeake turned increasingly to attacking land-based objectives rather than ships at sea because they seemed more lucrative. Loyalist raiders, supported by watermen, viewed plantations and their owners as centers of luxury, peopled by fine gentlemen who had little in common with them, which had been demonstrated by the gentry’s earlier hoarding of scarce salt.36 The Chesapeake gentry saw anyone who opposed their leadership as outlaws. British privateer warfare not only hurt a planter’s pocketbook, but it left him insecure, uncertain of how much influence he still exercised in his local bailiwick. As officers of the militia, could planters turn them out to oppose the privateers in a timely fashion? The planters blamed the lower orders for the destructive raids on their plantations, and in turn the lower orders felt the planters exploited them when they demanded supplies, taxes and service in the military.
Loyalist privateers were the backbone of the raids on the gentry’s Chesapeake plantations. The privateers encouraged watermen to serve with them. In February 1781, while Benedict Arnold’s army occupied the western shore of Virginia, Thomas Seon Sudler’s Back Creek plantation was ransacked by, in the words of the victim, ‘British barges and neighbors’.37 Three months later, Somerset’s George Dashiell was more specific, ‘The inhabitants of this county … have suffered much by parties either from British Cruisers or the inhabitants of the Tangier Islands (tho’ I believe the latter) as a number of them are well known by persons that they have plundered.’ These water-borne raids seemed to the gentry to be coordinated, aimed at the homes and slaves of militia officers, who supported the Revolution.
In presenting Loyalist merchants and ship owners with the opportunity for profit, Loyalist privateers expanded the war into the narrowest waterways, while also sustaining trade. Despite the competition privateers created, the Royal Navy came to accept their ability to add to naval resources necessary to carry on the war.