p99  16☆If a Man Coward . . .

Yes, a privateer needed a certain amount of nautical knowledge if he was going to get anywhere, and the more he had the better, for he might be called upon at any time to man a prize and, with a mere handful of his fellow privateers,  p100 take it into a distant port. There might be but five or six of them — and fifty or sixty prisoners below hatches. Those on deck would have to do a little of everything throughout the month or more it might take them to reach port, if they ever did. They'd need to handle the helm and handle sail, swab, cook, keep watch, everything, with all the while the fear of an uprising at their very elbows and an unseen enemy just over the horizon. They didn't get much chance to sleep on those runs. A privateer had to be hardy.

It stands to reason that he had to be physically brave. He had been picked for that purpose. As much as possible the average privateering skipper avoided fighting, which was expensive and even dangerous. Fighting brought no glory — only sabre cuts, only bullets. But the skipper was not always given a choice. He might be trapped and have to fight his way out. Trapping a privateer, driving him into a corner, was one of the favorite pastimes of the Royal Navy, often in co‑operation with privateers on their own side.

Then there was always the threat of the prisoners, who might break out from below, whether you were on your own vessel or on a prize. You and a few others had to handle the vessel. They had nothing to but watch you, marking your habits, your condition. They had nothing else to think about except how wonder­ful it would be to jump you some time when your back was turned. Of course this called for courage.

There are no records of deaths at sea among the privateers, but it is possible to assume that these were at least as many as in the regular Navy.

 p101  There was yet another hazard, seldom faced by the Navy man or the merchant sailor. Privateering vessels almost invariably were oversparred; their sticks, their masts, were too tall, their booms too long. Nor were their hulls, as a rule, capable of taking much of a pounding. In a profession in which your very life might depend upon speed, the privateers spread much too much canvas. They knew this, themselves. It was a calculated risk. Now and then a privateer would crack her sticks and broach‑to, dead-eyes under, and capsize. Now and then, too, one would disappear entirely, without trace. That happened down in the West Indies to the Arrow brig, skippered by Captain Conkling, with 14 guns and 150 men, no scrap of which was ever seen again; it was supposed that she vanished in a white squall. Arrow was not the only one, just the largest.

Yet if there was one quality that was needed above all others, above skill, endurance, courage, it was alertness. The privateer as he went about his business must have been the most wide awake man in the world.

Just getting out of port in the first place often called for the keenest vigilance. In the beginning of the war Britain had only enough warships to blockade effectively the southern ports, up to and including Baltimore, always a great privateering center. Gradually, however, she extended this blockade as far as New York, and eventually it even included the New England ports. They had been spared until that time because New England was notoriously opposed to the war and was threatening to break off from the rest of the states — something that Old England would have loved. Now, privateers laughed at the blockade,  p102 but they did not laugh lightly or for very long. They had to keep their wits about them. One touch of over­confidence when he was sneaking out — or sneaking back — and a man might (as the old‑time sailors used to put it) "wake up with sand in his ears" at the bottom of the sea.

The ocean was crowded in those days, yet running lights were not the rule, so dawn after a dark night often found a privateer within a few hundred yards of an enemy frigate, too late to escape. That happened all the time.

In the same way it happened with rifts in a fog. On August 5, 1812, off Cape Sable, the privateering brig Curlew, out of Boston, abruptly found herself almost in collision with the overtowering British frigate Acasta.​a The fog, which had muffled all sound, swallowing it, closed in again; but it was too late; Curlew had been taken.

At such times, however, minutes, even seconds, could be made to count. For every capture made in this fashion there were a dozen escapes, all close, and all, probably, the result of sharp eyes, sharp ears, and quick thinking. Even in daylight this was true. The seamen were encouraged to keep watching, to keep their eyes peeled, all the time. For this reason rewards were offered to those who first spotted a sail, as you will see in the articles of agreement below.

Sets of these articles were, of course, filed with the admiralty clerk before each cruise, against the event of a dispute about the share‑out afterward. There are plenty of them still available, still on record. This one happens to be that of the Yankee mentioned in the preceding chapter. It was for her first cruise, but it is unlikely that the  p103 others were any different, this one having worked so well. It is printed here because it is typical.

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Thayer's Note:

a The online Index of 19th Century Naval Vessels, q.v., puts the capture of the Curlew on July 24th.

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