privateer

But the engine was heavy, thirsty and unreliable, and a difficult season followed before Jordan ditched the Yamaha for a privateer Hart engine.

From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2025

Sir Francis Drake was an English privateer, sailing and seizing stuff on behalf of the queen.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 1, 2025

His father, Jan Jansen, a Dutch privateer, was captured by one of the Moorish states in 1618.

From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2019

The San Juan Bautista, a Spanish ship transporting enslaved Africans, was bound for Mexico when it was attacked by the White Lion and another privateer, the Treasurer, and forced to surrender its African prisoners.

From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2019

“Best privateer that ever raked a Britisher with a broadside! You want to buy expectations from me?”

From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham

These are licenses for private parties, known as privateers, to capture prizes at sea.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

In theory, pirates plunder and pillage outside the law, while corsairs were privateers regulated by authorities.

From National Geographic ● Jan. 11, 2024

The privateers were sponsored by the state, and set a ransom of 500 Guineas for Capt Lambton who was sailing The Stephenson from Bristol to Newcastle at the time.

From BBC ● May 17, 2023

She theorizes that fake dollars could be passed to privateers trading on the black market.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2016

Genêt’s first action in the United States was to hire American privateers, privately owned and manned ships, to attack and plunder British ships in the name of his government.

From "An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793" by Jim Murphy

By reviving prize law and privateering, the U.S. would enhance its leverage in the Strait of Hormuz.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026

The Protestant queen wanted colonies that would act as an ideological counterweight to Spanish Catholicism in the Americas and provide a base of operations for privateering expeditions that would raid Spanish shipping.

From Textbooks ● Dec. 14, 2022

But secession slashed tariff receipts by eliminating busy Southern ports and by launching a fleet of Confederate privateering vessels on the seas.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 1, 2022

Rather, the main reasons were an increase in trade, a decline in piracy and privateering and an improvement of ports.

From New York Times ● Nov. 24, 2015

In 1619, the first Africans arrived in the Virginia colony on a privateering ship.

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone