Wealth and Honour, Portsmouth During the Golden Age of Privateering, 1775 - 1815

The age of privateering was one of the most exciting periods in American sailing history. Daring captains and their crews roamed the seas in search of foreign vessels which they could capture and bring back to port where their prizes were sold at auction and the proceeds divided between the ship owners, officers and crew. Huge fortunes were made and lost. Privateers were often captured by enemy war ships and the officers and crews sometimes spent years in prison.
This volume concentrates on Portsmouth, New Hampshire – known as the Port of Piscataqua in its early days – during the golden age of America privateering, 1775 to 1815. The events which happened in Portsmouth and to its ships are typical of the experiences reported during this period in many American ports. Through the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Portsmouth privateers raided British shipping. In the interim, Portsmouth vessels were in turn prey to the British, French and Danish privateers in the upheaval caused by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. During this forty year period of alternating war and peace, Piscataqua sea captains shrewdly adjusted to prevailing conditions. Whether engaging in legitimate trade, smuggling or privateering, these shipmasters battled tropical fevers, storms, imprisonment, mutinies, pirates, enemy navies and foreign privateers in order to gain “Wealth and Honour” as explorer Martin Pring aptly phrased it more than a century earlier.