privateer
Example Sentences
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Sir Francis Drake was an English privateer, sailing and seizing stuff on behalf of the queen.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 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
As a youth, he claimed, he had served as a privateer, after which he was captured and enslaved by the Turks.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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
She theorizes that fake dollars could be passed to privateers trading on the black market.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2016
“What about the French privateers in the Mediterranean?”
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
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
While the practice known as privateering is archaic, the idea has come up in recent decades.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2022
By 1856, 42 nations agreed to the Declaration of Paris, which abolished privateering and formally turned pirates from accepted actors into international pariahs to be pursued by all the world’s major powers.
From Slate ● Jan. 2, 2014
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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