privateer
Example Sentences
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But the engine was heavy, thirsty and unreliable, and a difficult season followed before Jordan ditched the Yamaha for a privateer Hart engine.
From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2025
She either became a privateer herself, taking to the Mediterranean Sea to attack Spanish holdings such as Gibraltar, or she licensed privateers to attack Spain in her name.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 2, 2024
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
“The Cape’s not so bad. You’re safer there than lots of places. For instance—take the Mediterranean. There—you’d be running from a French privateer, and probably be hulled by a Barbary pirate.”
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
Letters of marque regulate against abuses; privateers are paid only if they honor all the restrictions on their activities.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
She either became a privateer herself, taking to the Mediterranean Sea to attack Spanish holdings such as Gibraltar, or she licensed privateers to attack Spain in her name.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 2, 2024
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
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
Authorization of privateering would allow the capture of Iranian vessels now being turned back or disabled.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
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
Antitrust enforcers say one of the most troubling activities of patent owners is what regulators call privateering.
From New York Times ● Jul. 16, 2013
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
Words Every Pirate Should Know
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Chapter 6: The American Revolution
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Torpedoed
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