privateer
Example Sentences
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The game follows Kenway, also from Swansea, as he sails to the Caribbean as a privateer looking for wealth, and evolves into a pirate, then assassin.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
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
“I guess a privateer would be a pirate in peacetime. But this is war. We only capture English ships.”
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
These are licenses for private parties, known as privateers, to capture prizes at sea.
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
“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
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
Vocabulary lists containing privateer
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Chapter 6: The American Revolution
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Torpedoed
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