Customer Reviews

Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In "Patriot Pirates", Robert H. Patton delivers a detailed study of the business of American Privateers during the years of 1775 through 1783. Patton's book illustrates that in most cases, these men were driven more by the lure of a quick fortune than by patriotism.

Patton's introduction lays the strategic environment under which the America's privateer industry began. Patton attributes the beginning of the enterprise to a quote from George Washington during his siege of Boston in 1775, "Finding we were not likely to do much in the land way, I fitted out several privateers, or rather armed vessels, in behalf of the Continent." Beginning as an aside to the siege of Boston, these Privateers were sanctioned by Congress and they soon affected the entire Atlantic seaboard and the Caribbean by attacking English and loyalist shipping wherever it may have been.

Patton's thorough research is apparent as he describes the efforts of the more successful businessmen like Rhode Island's John Brown; Robert Morris; Silas Deane; and Benjamin Franklin. Along with these American heroes, Patton also recounts the actions of Edward Bancroft, the most famous double-agent of the Revolution. Interspersed with this biographical information are stories of the actual ships and Captains who made life miserable for the British. "Patriot Pirates" recalls their greatest successes and the horrors of the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay, New York.

The book does an outstanding job of describing the international intrigue among England, France, Holland, Spain and the rebellious American Colonies. As neutral parties to the war, France and Holland could not accept the illicit goods captured from English ships. Patton describes the how industry bent these rules to the benefit of everyone except the British.

During the war, France created the front company, Hortalez and Company, to provide loans to purchase arms to the fledgling American army. Not only does Patton describe how this worked, but he also illustrates how this company was connected to the downfall of Louis XVI during the French Revolution.

The book is very well researched, and includes copious references to additional reading, but I would still recommend a map of the Caribbean to have at your side as you read this book. For readers like myself who can't tell the difference between a sloop and a frigate, it might be helpful to have a naval almanac too. "Patriot Pirates" is a fascinating look at the business of Privateering and its effects on International Relations.

In Patriot Pirates, Robert H. Patton tells the story of the American privateers in the Revolution. The book covers the entire war from Boston to Yorktown. American merchants armed hundreds of small ships to interdict the British maritime supply lines. Patton illustrates how patriotism and business came together in the privateers.

I read this book along with two other works, George Washington's Secret Navy (James L. Nelson) and If By Sea (George Daughan). Nelson's book recounts the the Siege of Boston (June 1775 to March 1776) when Washington took over the nascent Continental Army and quickly realized that he didn't have the assets to do more that continue the siege. He proceeded to arm several small schooners to interdict the British maritime supply lines. These five ships were the beginning of American maritime operations which eventually included the Continental Navy and privateers in an Atlantic campaign. Daughan's concentrates on the US Navy from 1775 to 1815. Together with Patton's book, this is a full history of Early American sea power.

I'd add the following works for a library on this subject:

Frederick C. Leiner The End of Barbary Terror
Richard Zacks The Pirate Coast
Ian W. Toll Six Frigates
A. B. C. Whipple To the Shores of Tripoli
John R. Elting Amateurs, To Arms!



In the past year I've read several excellent books about pirates and privateers.
My interest was originally sparked in 1995 with David Cordingly's "Under the Black Flag" because this book pictured the privateers/pirates as sea-going guerrillas.

The 3 books mentioned above have one flaw. They don't provide any context for American attitudes toward privateers, smugglers, etc. The American coastal communities were very familiar with privateers and their business. Until the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) few Royal Navy ships came to North America. American's were used to doing for themselves, and making a profit therein.

When the Revolution came, Americans were ready to bring the "fight" to the enemy. If this activity mostly involved taking merchant ships as prizes, so much the better.

The following are worth reading:
Peter Earle Pirate Wars
The Sack of Panama
Stephan Talty Empire of Blue Water
Benerson Little The Sea Rover's Practice
The Buccaneer's Realm
Colin Woodard The Republic of Pirates
Together these works cover piracy from the late 16th to the early 19th Century.

This book is told in chronological, geographic vignettes which follow various people with quick biographical sketches as they engaged in privateering. There is little in the way of overview on privateering in general or its overall impact on the war. What is there is scattered throughout the book. Patriot Pirates would benefit from a more focused approach: a survey of privateering; or a thesis to be proved- privateering was critical to weakening the British war effort; even overview chapter. The narratives could have been better employed as highlights to these approaches. As is, it is an easy read with some good information on privateering and a solid bibliography for further reading. Much of the non-privateering information will be repetitive to even casual students of the era.

Neither concise nor comprehensive nor difinitive

Unfortunately, this book is not a history of the Privateering war during the Revolution but instead meerly provides a number of case studies taken seemingly at random of American Privateers and those who invested or profited from them. Additionally, many of these case studies include exceptionally long tangents into subjects that have very little to do with privateering. For example, much of the book is devoted to the great General Nathanial Greene merely because he invested and lost money on privateers. Another case is the decidedly undue amount of attention paid to the slave-trading activities of people who also were privateers. The author also makes his low opinion of privateers evident. In answering the question, "Is a privateer a licensed pirate or is a pirate an unlicensed privateer?" the author clearly thinks the privateer is a pirate.

I cam to the book hoping for an assessment of the privateering "guerre de course" of the American Revolution and was terribly disappointed. The big historical question is: Did the American Privateers significantly affect the course of the war and if so how? That question was not even addressed.

This book does have a limited role however. If you are already familiar with American Privateers, this gives you a worm's eye view of the "trade" from the perspective of crewmen, captains, owners, and investors. For that limited purpose alone I would recommend the book. (This is what lifts my rating from two stars to three.) Even then, I would advise looking elsewhere.

This is one of the most interesting books I've read in recent years. Robert Patton, who it a descendant of the World War II general, has turned himself into a historian, and this is his first work of true history. He recounts in some detail the story of the Revolutionary War privateering industry, which caused considerable damage to the British economy. The author quotes George Washington as saying that the privateers were the "pivot on which everything turned".

Patton writes carefully of the various events and circumstances of the privateer war. He goes over in some detail the various personalities involved in the war, everyone from interesting characters like Nathaniel Greene around to more obscure characters like the Brown brothers and John Manley, the prototypical privateer who made the first and last captures of the war. He also discusses the fortunes that were made, some of which continue to enrich old families on the East Cost.

This is a fascinating account of a part of the Revolutionary War that's little-known except as a footnote. The author provides a considerable amount of information, and also analysis of the whole issue. I really enjoyed this book and felt I learned a considerable amount of information about the subject.

This was very enlightening for me. I got a totally new sense of the down-and-dirty Revolutionary world. There are ocean battles in it, but if that's all you're looking for there are probably other books to go to. This one has a much wider scope that includes business, naval strategy, politics, even the slave trade. It features an array of high and low characters, and most of them aren't household names, which I thought was a good thing but others may disagree. I think the storytelling is really artful and smooth, because in a pretty short narrative it presents all sorts of scenes from Massachusetts to the Caribbean to Paris and London, but it weaves them together well, and then it ends with a couple of teenage seamen whose adventures capture the suffering, persistence, and sheer guts of the American patriots. This book turned out to be a much more significant portrayal of history than I'd thought when I first bought it.

I had to read an excerpt of this for US history and ended up getting the book and reading it all. It gave me a better and faster take on the revolution than anything I read before. It is definitely a lot of finance and trade information along with the sea stories, but it is told through the characters which makes it read fast. From this book I think Silas Deane and Nathaniel Greene are two of the most undertold people of the revolution and are really interesting and kind of sad how it turned out for them.

Book covers a seldom-explored facet of the Revolution. Book deals more with investing in patriotism, than in specific encounters of privateers.

When you think about the Revolutionary War and the men who won it, you might think of George Washington, John Paul Jones, and the brave militiamen who fought in hand-to-hand combat. Few people would rattle off "pirates" in their short list.

Pirates, you say? Yes, piratesā"the privateers whose job and joy it was to take down the British ships, not only racing through the blockades, but capturing and plundering the British merchant and supply ships to disrupt and frustrate British trade. Privateers are "legal" almost like a navy. Because England didn't recognize us as a country, they wouldn't consider them privateers, but pirates. Acting against the government of England.

Who were these men that financed this lesser-known aspect of the Revolutionary War? How were they convinced to go about this unsavory task? And frankly, is there anything more American than fighting for your country while making a nice profit?

Robert H. Patton paints a vivid picture of Revolutionary privateering. He comes out of the blocks with nearly laugh-out-loud humor. You've got to respect a man who admits upfront that he was always more interested in the Civil War than the Revolutionary War. Engaging and energetic, he tells this story of history in very readable prose. And though many readers might not be familiar with the privateers, Patton does an excellent job of telling their stories while tying them back to the people and events of the Revolutionary War that are more commonly known.

Armchair Interviews says: Unique look at our country's long-ago history.

When people discuss or historians write about the American Revolution the focus is ALWAYS about the land campaigns. The closest I have ever come to reading anything about naval warfare is John Paul Jones exploits and these are always mentioned in passing or after the fact. Patriot Pirates is a most jaw dropping work that describes not only the sheer numbers of American privateers engaged, but the magnitude of the engagement, a massive seaborne insurgency that ravaged British merchant shipping and helped to win America's independence.

Why has American privateering not been brought to light? Was it the fact that privateering was nothing more than legalized piracy? Probably so but it was also the only way to create and equip a Navy on someone else's dime. The Continental Congress jumped on this method of financing a Navy in a material way. More than 2,000 privately owned warships were commissioned by Congress to prey on enemy transports, seize them by force and sell their cargos to be divided between crew, officers and owners.

So effective was the American privateer that it became quite a huge trade, employing tens of thousands and involving some of the most prominent citizens such as John Hancock, John Livingston, and Robert Morris. Privateering was approved by Washington in his siege of Boston; Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin outfitted ships, arranged for the sale of confiscated goods in French ports and issued their own comissions. But probably the most effective participant was William Bingham, an American appointed by Congress to operate out of the Caribbean port of Martinique. Yet again authorizing vessels independently, his exploits are the stuff of legend. Britain also authorized privateers. Once authorized, over 100 were launched by loyalists in New York City and more than 1,000 launched from Britain and the West Indies.

It is simply amazing that this stunning growth business, practiced by both sides, is for the most part, a completely unreported part of the War for Independence. The vast fortunes that were made through these efforts survive to this day, among them, the author asserts, are the Peabodys, Cabots and Lowells of Massachusetts and the Derbys and the Browns of Rhode Island.

This is a fascinating work, one not to be missed.