__English Privateers: A Cultural Myth__

Privateers: A Quick Overview

Although the term 'privateer' may refer to the captain, the owner of the ship, the crew, or, indeed, the vessel itself, the notion of privateering occupies a precarious position within the history of piracy and in the larger cultural memory of England. Including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, English privateers have become a celebrated aspect of English history, fundamental to the development of English identity. By definition, privateers were sailors who received letters of commission from the English Crown that charged them with the task of capturing, destroying enemy vessels and seizing their goods. The fundamental point of distinction between a privateer and a pirate is the sanction the letter of marque provided.

Privateering: England's Entry to the Colonial Game

The England of the early-modern era "displayed no overwhelming interest in the newly-discovered world of America" in part because the state was negotiating the "building of nation-states, steering the course of a religious reformation unleashed by Luther, coping with unprecedented population growth, rising prices, and European economic differentiation, and managing the internal strife and international friction that accompanied the recentering of the European economy from Italy to the northwest of Europe" (Earle 479). Additionally, England feared a repeat of cultural declension as it had occurred in Ireland, where English settlers had abandoned their civility and had adopted Irish ways (Earle 479). Overseas colonisation, then, threatened the very notion of Englishness.

As such, Spain entered headfirst into colonialism and geocommerce, establishing footholds throughout the Americas, the West Indies, and the Caribbean (Barbour 529). Privateering, then, became England's belated answer to Spanish imperial and geocommercial dominance as part of Elizabeth's "highly aggressive paranaval policy towards Spain" in the 1570s and 1580s (Fuchs 45). Long before war between England and Spain became official, Elizabeth gave her "not-so-tacit approval to privateering expeditions that ostensibly sought new channels for English trade" (Fuchs 45). The fact that this support of privateering already points to a blurring of legitimate and illegitimate practices. Technically, privateering "was a strictly wartime practice" (Thomson 22). In all actuality, this support of English trade meant attacks on Spanish colonies and Spanish ships in the New World. The Crown began issuing to Sir Francis Drake and others letters of marque that bestowed the blessings of the English state upon privately-owned ships to attack and seize the goods of pirate and foreign ships, especially Spanish ships. Privateering, based in an economic alternative to colonialism, combined "profit, adventure and patriotic service," especially in regard to the increasing threats to paramount English trade interests coming from the Spanish as well as pirates (Hampden 16).

Drake and the Sea Dogs

England gained naval supremacy over her Imperial rivals through the actions of the Elizabethan Sea Dogs. Drake, Cavendish, Clifford (the third earl of Cumberland), and Raleigh, in collusion with the English Crown, "engaged in all kinds of violent activities directed against Spain in the New World...[such as] plundering Spanish ships and settlements" as well as extortion (Thomson 23). Although Janice Thomson claims the Sea Dogs "engaged in what might be termed state-sponsored terrorism," both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were knighted for their achievements (Thomson 23). These two privateers become Elizabethan heroes, evoking "populist ideas of national identity" and "an active English masculinity" (Netzloff 72).

Sir Francis Drake began his association with the sea as a child when his family moved to the River Medway in Kent; it was here that the King's ships took anchor and the royal dockyard at Chatham was taking shape (Hampden 25). Edmund Drake, Francis's father, was appointed preacher to the seamen and the family lived "on an old hulk on the river" (Hampden 25). Francis grew up among the men and the ships of England's navy until the accession of Elizabeth I when he was placed "with a neighbouring pilot...wherewith he sailed up and down the coast, guided his ships in and out of harbours, and sometimes transported merchandise into France and Zeeland" (Hampden 26). The young Drake, learning that John Hawkins was preparing to sail for the New World, sold his ship and joined with Hawkins.

John Hawkins had made a fortune as a slave trader; the second of his voyages into Portuguese areas in Africa brought a profit of sixty per cent for the shareholders. Hawkins "captured Negroes on the west coast of Africa...and sold them to the Spanish settlers in the West Indian island," depicting the amount of economic gain to be made in non-wartime privateering, which, technically, amounts to piracy (Hampden 26). William and John Hawkins outfitted the ships that bore Drake on his first sea voyage, in 1566-1567, which was a slaving expedition. On this venture, Drake and the ships clashed with Portuguese ships off the Guinea coast and the Cape Verde Islands, which "was presumably Drake's baptism" into the violence of privateering (Hampden 27).

Queen Elizabeth, in 1577, commissioned Drake for a lengthy campaign to "pillage the Spanish Pacific coast," although the objective described publicly was for Alexandria to trade with the Turks (Hampden 115). The Queen, Drake has reported, "would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain, for divers injuries" and Drake "was the only man that might do this exploit" (Hampden 115). The top-secret nature of this report suggests a tacit understanding of non-wartime privateering as illegal. The Draft Plan of this expedition said Drake was to return by means of the Straits of Magellan by the end of thirteen months; this leaves little doubt about his goal of "searching for the Northwest Passage, or going to the Moluccas, or sailing around the world" (Hampden 117). Drake's main objective, certainly, was to plunder and torment Spanish settlements throughout the Pacific coast. The beginning of his voyage around the world was indeed one of "sensational pillaging of the Pacific coast...[which] had roused all of Spanish America against him" (Hampden 117). Drake's circumnavigation of the globe embodies both an English longing to establish direct trade with the Spice Islands and an even greater "triumph for himself and for English maritime enterprise" that resulted in an enormous haul of plunder (Hampden 118).

Cultural Significance

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice,Shylock describes England as "a nation of pirates," a challenging sentiment for the emergent nationalism of England as it engages in the beginning of its imperial enterprise (Netzloff 52). References to Drake's 1596 pillaging of Cadiz in Shakespeare's drama disrupts the alignment of England and Venice within the play and characterizes England as a site of potential economic loss, not a "budding commercial empire" (Netzloff 51). Salerio's evocation of a particularly English threat that refers to the piratical, although sanctioned, actions of Sir Francis Drake evidence the difficulty in maintaining a purely positive identity for these early privateers; English mariners, like Drake, were said to make "good sailors, and better pirates," making even more ambiguous the character of this English nation (Netzloff 52).

The identification of privateers with pirates becomes even more troublesome in the Jacobean period when King James I issued a proclamation aimed at the suppression of piracy. James I was aware of "the need to appease the ideological interests backing policies of privateering" because it provided both economic and nationalist benefits (Netzloff 53). James's emphasis on the expansion of commerce, especially the settlement of the American colonies, demanded a return to an aristocratic ideology that privateers subverted, especially those like Drake who came from lower-classes (Fuchs 46). The economic impact of James's suppression played a marked role in the later beatification of Drake and other Sea Dogs. Many of the surviving privateers "could simply remain content with the profits they had gained" while others "could continue to profit...while using their offices to protect them from prosecution" (Netzloff 54). The upper-class privateers and those who were knighted, like Drake, continued to enjoy a privileged position that aligned them with the English nobility and not the lower-classes of unemployed sailors, many of whom "went with as great a grudging to serve in his Majesty's ships as if it were to be slaves in the galleys" (Netzloff 54). Unintentionally, James's attempts to suppress piracy relegated it to the lower-classes, while those who were celebrated became associated with the upper-classes because they enjoyed titles or governmental appointments. This began the cultural rehabilitation of privateer and his distinction from a pirate.

The Spanish remember Drake as "El Draque" or "The Dragon," while the English have knighted him (Thomson 23). Drake's pillaging and circumnavigation have become "an exemplary instance of English courage and enterprising spirit, and [his] depredations are suitably couched as revenge for Spanish attacks" (Fuchs 47). In his Principle Navigations, Richard Hakluyt begins the cultural rehabilitation and cononization of Drake, differentiating him from the demonized pirate in the Jacobean period (Fuchs 47). Recoloring Drake's as service to the Crown, Hakluyt reclaims the privateer for the Crown, providing him a fixed and English identity. This, in turn, serves to reassert a permanent moral difference between pirates and Englishmen: the privateer remains "a state-sanctioned and valorized emblem of emergent national identity" (Netzloff 52). James I, while issuing a statue that officially ended Tudor sponsorship of privateering, praised the "zeale and affection" that privateers "bare to the good of their Countrey" and their role in the "maintenance & employment of the Shipping and Mariners of England" (Netzloff 53). These are necessary points of distinction between the pirate and the privateer that encourage the canonization of Sir Francis Drake as one of the saints of English national identity, especially considering the nostalgia with which they were described in Elizabethan dramas and other literary accounts and the wholesale condemnation and suppression of piracy in the Jacobean period. Drake's place in the English pantheon is paramount because the populace associates him with an epic and mythical power.

English Heroes at Sea

The identification of Englishness, especially English masculinity, with the mythical Sir Francis Drake does not end in the Jacobean period. Jane Austen's 1818 Persuasion reflects the distinctly English cult of naval worship that begins with the beatification of Sir Francis Drake. Wentworth made his rise on a sloop, a type of ship that was used most often to raid and capture other ships (Harris 183). The connection to raiding and indeed pirating other ships creates an association with the privateers and Sea Dogs of Drake's era who, like Wentworth, carried out violent acts against other ships and nations in an English uniform and with English consent. Wentworth's hero-promotion was a way for sailors to legally claim prize money from their captured ships. Austen's hero uses these acts of piracy to "block Spanish and American interference with the lucrative West Indies trade," which Drake's circumnavigation encouraged if it did not establish it (Harris 183). The replication of the economic and political intent of privateering calls to mind the very same reasons why Henry VII and Elizabeth I initially provided Drake and others letters of marque to disrupt the economic dominance Spain. This 19th century hero sails to and from Plymouth, which is the same place where the statue of Drake marks the harbor. These associations and similarities evoke a continuation of Sir Francis Drake's legacy and his identification with the ideal English male; this English masculine standard clearly remains in the service of the Crown upon the seas that Drake helped. Wentworth embodies a continuation, almost a fulfilment, of Drake's England. The Austen character embodies the British Empire that the raids of the privateers helped to found, cementing the heroic position of the English naval hero and fully completing the privateer's rehabilitation from a licensed pirate to an English ideal.

Works Cited

Barbour, Violet. "Privateers and Pirates of the West Indies." __The American Historical Review__. 16.3 (1911): 529-566.

Earle, Carville. "Pioneers of Providence: The Anglo-American Experience, 1492-1792." __Annals of the Association of American Geographers__. 82.3 (1992): 478-499.

Fuchs, Barbara. "Faithless EMpires: Pirates, Renegadoes, and the English Nation." __English Literary History__. 67.1 (2000): 45-69.

Hampden, John. "Francis Drake: Privateer." Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1972.

Harris, Jocelyn. "Domestic Virtues." __Eighteenth Century Fiction__. 19.1&2 (2006): 181-205.

Netzloff, Mark. "England's Internal Colonies: Class, Capital, and the Literature of Early Modern English Colonialism." New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.

Thomson, Janice E. "Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe." Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Images Cited

The images used were graciously borrowed from Jim and Ellen Moody at jimandellen.org, juggling.org, the British Broadcasting Company, the National Portrait Gallery of England, and the St. Osyth Parish Council.