Pirates & Privateers
Buccaneers On The Bay 

It has been said that prostitution, medicine and piracy are humanity’s oldest professions. The Bay of Fundy with its unusual currents is known to have treacherous tides and dangerous waters but few people realize that in the 1700 and 1800’s, it was also a resting place for pirates and privateers. They slipped up into the Bay and refreshed themselves and repaired their ships.

Piracy has existed wherever the rewards of the crime have been worth the risk of punishment. Organized piracy flourished widely among the early civilizations of the Middle East. In the Mediterranean, piracy was accepted by merchants and seamen alike as an occupational hazard. No nation or nationality had a monopoly on piracy but it was the Europeans of the Atlantic seaboard - the French, the Dutch and the British who were to develop piracy into its most refined form. North America also used pirates to their advantage because pirate plunder was valuable only if its value could be realized and it was North America that provided the greatest market. During much of the Golden Age of piracy, pirates operated with the active support and cooperation of the governors, merchants and populace of most of the North American colonies. American ports gave them protection and hospitality, ships, provisions, crews, fake privateer commissions and a place to sell their booty, for the American colonies made a profit out of piracy, just as the pirates themselves did.

From time to time, pirates found it profitable to offer their services to nations at war, and in this role they operated as more or less legal naval auxiliaries under the general name of privateers. The term applied to the crews of privately owned ships, specially commissioned by government letters of marque to attack and loot the shipping of an enemy. The practice of licensing privateers dated back to the 13th century. Nations considered privateering one of the most effective and least expensive ways of bedeviling the enemy. Another term which was used was buccaneers, a term meaning “smoker of meat” and it came from herdsmen and woodsmen on the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola before they turned their hand to sea roving. The line between privateer, buccaneer and pirate was a fine one.

The whole business of privateering was of great importance to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland in both military and economic terms. Privateers were to the Atlantic Provinces what the militia was to Canada. A letter of marque granted civilians the legal right to both wage war on the enemy of his state and in the process, to recover their own costs by keeping most of the proceeds from the vessels which were captured. A pirate doing the exact thing same thing without the letter of marque as a license would be hanged. Privateers were obliged to follow strict rules for disposing of their captures; they had to be taken to a port that had a Vice-Admiralty Court and legality of the capture had to be proven before a judge. Once the judge ruled that the prize was good and lawful, the ship and/or cargo would be sold at auction and the proceeds shared among owners, officers and crew according to their pre-cruise agreement. (cont. on page 10)

In 1809, the United States of America passed a law which forbade any American citizen to trade with Great Britain or her colonies. This was exceptionally good news for Saint John because almost immediately New England merchants began smuggling goods out of the United States into the New Brunswick ports of St. Andrews and Saint John. There they were traded for British goods which were then smuggled back into the United States. Saint John became the centre for both these activities, not only for New Brunswick but for the Bay of Fundy shore of Nova Scotia as well. When war with the United States broke out in 1812, things got even better. Not only did the navy need more timber but New Englanders began to smuggle more than ever before.

However, wartime economic activities were not restricted to trading, New Brunswickers along the Fundy shore were experienced seamen and many of them began to look to privateering as a way of putting money in their pockets as well as protecting their trading vessels from attacks by Yankee privateers. Two ships used by New Brunswick privateers were The Brunswicker, formerly the American Revenue cutter Commodore Barry, which had been captured by the Royal Navy and brought into Saint John and the General Smythe which was also outfitted and a letter of marque was given to her captain. She captured several American vessels some valued at thousands of pounds. Despite these successes, privateering was not popular with certain powerful figures in New Brunswick and London. The cruisers often captured American vessels which were heading for British ports with their cargoes of goods smuggled out of the United States and the owners of those businesses were the losers. The result was the Provincial government ceased issuing letters-of-marque. However, New Brunswickers were accustomed to finding loopholes in the law and privateering proved no exception. They got their letter of marque from Nova Scotia.

New Brunswick privateers were not the pirates we know about today. They didn’t break the law but they perhaps bent it a bit. They definitely did not do, nor have, any intention to kill or maim anyone. They did it because for them privateering was the best way to make a living and provide for their families, and they did what they had always done, “just go with the flow.”

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