privateer

Ecclestone, a former second-hand car dealer, recognised a kindred spirit and was a kind of guardian angel at times as Jordan navigated the choppy waters of being a privateer team owner.

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

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

“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

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

Genêt’s first action in the United States was to hire American privateers, privately owned and manned ships, to attack and plunder British ships in the name of his government.

From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy

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

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 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