privateer

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

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

It was here that the White Lion, a 160-ton English privateer ship, landed at what was then known as Point Comfort.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2019

There, Horace Hunley and his partners intended to operate the submarine as a privateer, helping the Confederacy break the blockade the North had placed on Southern ports.

From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler

These are licenses for private parties, known as privateers, to capture prizes at sea.

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

“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

An 1856 treaty purported to ban privateering, but the U.S. refused to sign.

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

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