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"While the sloops and frigates of the United States Navy had thus been acquiring imperishable renown on every sea, our flag was yet more widely displayed and as nobly defended by a class of vessels concerning whose exploits too little is known.

It may well be supposed that as the declaration of war was read in seaport after seaport, idle sailors and the owners of idle ships began to prepare for privateering.  In happier days the sharp, fast sailing, clipper-built ships so well fitted for the work of commerce-destroying would have been few in number.  But orders in council and French decrees had produced a class of vessels especially designed to escape the British cruisers sent to enforce the orders.  That a merchant ship of the United States which had been to France, or to Holland, or to some West Indian port, and was on her way home with a cargo, should be stopped and searched at sea was of the utmost importance.  Search might give rise to a doubt as to the character of the ship and cargo.  Such a doubt was sure to send her into a British port for examination, and such an examination, even if it ended in acquittal, broke up the voyage, lost the owners of the cargo a market, and ruined all concerned by the enormous costs of British litigation. 

Accordingly, long before the embargo was laid, shipbuilders met this danger and constructed ships so swift that it was all but impossible for any single cruiser to overtake one.  Now that fast sailers were wanted, they became greatly in demand, and, with the idle pilot-boats of the chief seaports, formed the first privateers.  To gather fifty or sixty hardy and experienced seamen, purchase stores and ammunition and a sufficient number of sabers, muskets, and boarding pikes, mount a long-tom in the middle of the ship and perhaps half a dozen lighter guns in broadside, was a matter of a couple weeks, after which the privateer-called by some saucy name as the "Orders of Council", or "Right of Search", the "Revenge", the "Yorktown", the "Saratoga", the "Fair Trader", or "Paul Jones"-was ready for sea.

Before the middle of July, 1812, sixty-five such privateers had sailed.  Before the middle of October, twenty-six had gone from New York and seventeen from Baltimore, in addition to twenty-five letters of marque.  Those from New England coasted along Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; those from New York and Baltimore cruised down the Florida coast and in and out among the British Windward Islands in the Caribbean Sea, making prize of every merchantman they fell in with.  If the cargo were valuable and the privateer could spare the men, the prize was sent in and became subject to examination in a District Court of the United States.  The purpose of the examination was to inquire into the character of the prize and see if it was really the property of the enemy at the time of capture.  If so, it was pronounced forfeited, was sold, and the money distributed among the owners, the officers and crew of the privateer, according to the term of the written agreement existing between them.

The sale of the ship and cargo was generally made by the United States Marshal, who deducted one and a quarter per cent from the gross receipts and paid the remainder over to the clerk of the Court, who, subtracting another one and a quarter per cent, distributed what was left to the claimants.  When to these commissions were added the duties, the costs of condemnation, and a host of charges, many a prize became far more profitable to the Court, the Government, and the officials than to any one of the captors who had risked his life in taking it.  That this should be seemed most unreasonable and unjust, and became the subject of a memorial to Congress by the owners of privateers fitted out in New York.

Light-armed craft had by that time fallen into disuse, for vessels ready to surrender, even after a fight, to a privateer of six or eight guns on the broadside, had either been swept from the sea by the end of 1812, or sailed under strong convoy.  British merchantmen having a common destination, as the East Indies, or the West Indies, or the South American coast, would assemble at Portsmouth, Plymouth, or Cork, or if homeward bound, at Rio or Jamaica, and sail thence under the protection of heavily armed ships of war.  A large fleet would have for escort a seventy-four in the van, a fast sailing frigate in the rear, and on either side a gun-brig or sloop of war.  A smaller fleet was fortunate if beside a seventy-four it secured a frigate or a couple of sloops of war.  Such fleets, laden as they usually were with sugar, coffee, molasses, rum, and specie, were most tempting, and when the privateers sailed in pairs, some of the merchantmen were sure to be taken before the voyage ended.

In spite of every effort on the part of the convoy to drive off the privateersmen, they would hang upon the fleet for days and weeks at a time, waiting for a chance to run in and cut out a prize.  The chance might happen when the merchantmen had become widely separated from any cause, or when the slow sailers, by lagging, had stretched the distance between the armed ship in the van, and that in the rear to several miles.  To dash into the midst of the fleet, run alongside one of the vessels, take out the crew and specie and apply the torch, or possibly throw a prize crew on board and make all sail, was under such circumstances, no uncommon occurrence.  Should an attempt be made to drive the attacking ship away, it's fellow was ready to run in while the frigate or the sloop of war was in pursuit.  In thick weather, or when a gale had scattered the fleet, the privateers had little more to do than select their prey.

But this system of convoy proved too slow for importers who owned ships, and who, to be first in port and reap the profits of an understocked market, were ready to take enormous risks.  By these men, therefore, private armed vessels called running sloops, which relied on their speed and their own guns for defense against the American privateers, were sent to sea in great numbers.  The cost of them was enormous, for insurance rates were high, and the great crews necessary to man the guns and repel boarders rolled up the expenses and reduced the freight-carrying capacity.

But the profits were also enormous, for they were always richly laden with costly goods.  They were accordingly most eagerly sought by privateers, and to capture them, a new type of vessel was built in our shipyards.  As specimens of naval architecture these ships had no equal on any sea.  In length on the spar deck, they were not more than one hundred and twenty feet, and in extreme breadth, were almost thirty-one feet.  They were rigged as ships or brigs, with long slender masts and spars, had a light rail on the gunwale in place of solid bulwarks, carried a cloud of canvas, were armed with from six to eighteen guns-one of which, called "long-tom", was always mounted on a pivot amidships-and were manned by a crew of one hundred to one hundred fifty sailors.  Intended to fight only as a last resort, the sailing qualities of the privateer were chiefly considered and developed by her builder.  Nothing so astonished her English enemies as the height and thinness of her masts, as the length of her spars, as the handiness with which she worked to windward, as the rapidity with which, at the very moment escape seemed hopeless, she would turn, almost within her own length, and shaking out an immense spread of canvas, make off into the eye of the wind before her opponent could even come about.

Of the fights and adventures and hair-breadth escapes of the privateers but little is known.  Many were owned by stockholders, and many more by firms and private citizens who did not preserve and did not make public the reports of the captains.  The records of the Admiralty Courts yield nothing, and, though vessels bore something of a public character, their logs were never deposited in any public office for preservation.  Now and then, after a desperate hand-to-hand fight, or a long chase and happy escape from overpowering force, the letter of a captain would find it's way into the newspapers, and would be copied and preserved.  Meager as such material is, it contains the records of every famous sea fight in which the privateers were concerned, and is sufficient to form a rude idea of the great part they bore in the struggle for commercial independence.

The desperate nature of many of the cruises is well illustrated by the experiences of the privateer-schooner Comet on the coast of Brazil and among the West India islands.  The Comet, in command of Captain Thomas Boyle, was armed and fitted out at Baltimore in 1812, and in December, when ready for sea, run down the bay, and on a dark and stormy night slipped through the British blockading squadron and made for the coast of Brazil.  On the ninth of January, when off Pernambuco, he fell in with a coaster, and was told that some English vessels were to leave that port in a few days.  Captain Boyle remained accordingly in the offing till the fourteenth, when about noon, he sighted four sail from the coast before he cut them off.  At three in the afternoon, when the ships were six leagues from land, he bore up and made all sail in chase.

At six, he was near enough to perceive that one of them was a large man-of-war brig, and having called all hands to quarters and loaded the guns with round shot and grape, the decks were cleared and made ready for action.  An hour later, being quite close to the enemy, the colors were displayed and the Comet sheered up to the brig, whose Captain hoisted the Portuguese flag, hailed and said he would send a boat on board.  Boyle thereupon hove-to, received it, and was informed by the officer that the brig of war was a Portuguese national ship of twenty guns and one hundred and sixty-five men, and that the others were British merchantmen bound for Europe under his protection, and must not be molested.  Boyle replied that he was an American cruiser, showed his commission, and said he would take the Englishmen if he could.  The Portuguese answered that he would be sorry if anything unpleasant occurred, but, as he was ordered to convoy the ships, he would protect hem.  The two then parted, and Boyle, finding the officer did not return, made sail for the English vessels, consisting of a ship of fourteen guns and two brigs of ten guns each.

A running fight of five hours now followed before the three Englishmen struck.  Only one of the three was secured, for so battered were the other two, and so persistent the attack of the Portuguese man-of-war, that Captain Boyle suffered them to make off, and contented himself with making prize of a Scotch ship a few days after.  He was next met and chased by the Frigate Surprise; but he easily outsailed her, and continuing his cruise down the West Indies, discovered, one morning in February, when near the island of St. John, two sails to leeward and followed them.  The nearest was an armed brig from Demerara, loaded with sugar, rum, coffee, and cotton, and as he came up she set her colors, fired a gun and struck.  Stopping just long enough to put a prize crew on board, Captain Boyle went in pursuit of the second, which after an exchange of broadsides, lowered her flag and began cutting away her rigging.  The purpose of this was to delay the privateer till the man-of-war brig Swaggerer, then in plain sight, could come down and drive him away.  But Captain Boyle repaired the rigging of the prize as hastily as possible, and sent her in charge of a prize crew, through the passage between St. John's and St. Thomas, while he sailed around and about the Swaggerer till his prize had escaped, when he steered for the Capes of the Chesapeake, again ran the blockade and reached Baltimore in safety."