privateer

After surviving some of the war’s most consequential battles, Greenwood goes home and then he becomes a privateer, Ward says.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 12, 2025

At this year's race all 62 cars, including the many privateer entries, run on a sustainable fuel made from vineyard grape skin waste.

From BBC ● Jun. 12, 2023

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

He’d had a running fight with a French privateer and had lost three men.

From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham

The private security forces that some shippers engage today to prevent piracy could do the work of privateers.

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

As hostility between England and Spain grew, Elizabeth’s government sponsored privateers – pirates working for the English crown – led by a skillful and ruthless captain named Sir Francis Drake.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2020

“Because,” Collins growled, “he sailed on privateers before he was knee high to a capstan. He knows guns. If we have trouble with the French he’ll be worth the rest of the crew put together.”

From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham

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

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

While the practice known as privateering is archaic, the idea has come up in recent decades.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2022

In privateering and blockade-runner cases involving the seizure of neutral and Confederate vessels, for example, the court did not defer to the executive’s views.

From Slate ● Jan. 8, 2019

In 1619, the first Africans arrived in the Virginia colony on a privateering ship.

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone