Privateer
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
A vessel owned and fitted out as individual property, and navigated in its owner's interest, but authorized by the sovereign power to cruise for and capture vessels of a country with whom such power is at war. The employment of such vessels as a means of strengthening an inadequate navy was formerly very common, but has diminished in recent times; partly by the advance in views as to the proper conduct of war, and partly owing to the increased difficulty of fitting out vessels upon private means, adequate to the demands of naval warfare as now conducted.