privateer
Example Sentences
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The game follows Kenway, also from Swansea, as he sails to the Caribbean as a privateer looking for wealth, and evolves into a pirate, then assassin.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
Sir Francis Drake was an English privateer, sailing and seizing stuff on behalf of the queen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2025
His father, Jan Jansen, a Dutch privateer, was captured by one of the Moorish states in 1618.
From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2019
The San Juan Bautista, a Spanish ship transporting enslaved Africans, was bound for Mexico when it was attacked by the White Lion and another privateer, the Treasurer, and forced to surrender its African prisoners.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2019
“Best privateer that ever raked a Britisher with a broadside! You want to buy expectations from me?”
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
The U.S. can gain some leverage in the stalemate by reviving the law of prize, which governs ships seized during war, and by authorizing privateers to attack enemy shipping.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
In theory, pirates plunder and pillage outside the law, while corsairs were privateers regulated by authorities.
From National Geographic ● Jan. 11, 2024
The privateers were sponsored by the state, and set a ransom of 500 Guineas for Capt Lambton who was sailing The Stephenson from Bristol to Newcastle at the time.
From BBC ● May 17, 2023
She theorizes that fake dollars could be passed to privateers trading on the black market.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2016
On the one hand, the country was already waging an undeclared war against French privateers in the Atlantic and Caribbean.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
By reviving prize law and privateering, the U.S. would enhance its leverage in the Strait of Hormuz.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
All of this sounds very nice and would no doubt be an improvement from the privateering corporate status quo.
From Slate ● May 9, 2024
The Protestant queen wanted colonies that would act as an ideological counterweight to Spanish Catholicism in the Americas and provide a base of operations for privateering expeditions that would raid Spanish shipping.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022
But secession slashed tariff receipts by eliminating busy Southern ports and by launching a fleet of Confederate privateering vessels on the seas.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 1, 2022
In 1619, the first Africans arrived in the Virginia colony on a privateering ship.
From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone
Vocabulary lists containing privateer
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Chapter 6: The American Revolution
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