Pirates, Corsairs, and Privateers

Earlier this spring many Americans seemed to discover that there’s a piracy problem off the eastern coast of Africa. The international news media had reported about Somali pirates for years, but this time four of them took an American captive, and suddenly all our fond thoughts about Capt. Jack Sparrow vanished.

Folks who at other times express little sympathy for Americans who get in trouble delivering aid to a war zone suddenly advocated severe military action to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips. Some suggested punishing Somalis collectively for the actions of those four young men. The noise tapered off considerably when the U.S. Navy rescued Phillips, killing and capturing those particular pirates, but the larger problems in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden remain.

During that national discussion, many people invoked the historical antecedents of American actions against the Tripolitan states of North Africa starting in 1801. Few noted how for the previous fifteen years Congress had allocated money—up to 20% of the federal budget—to buy protection from those governments and to ransom prisoners from their corsairs.

One of the first popular American novels was Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive (1797), about such a captured sailor. (In the department of meaningless coincidence, that novel’s hero is named Underhill and Tyler became chief justice of Vermont; the rescued Capt. Phillips was from Underhill, Vermont.)

That novel portrays some other facts that Americans don’t always recall in discussing the “Barbary pirates.” Corsairs seized American ships only if they came close to North Africa; their waters, their rules. A lot of the American ships which did sail there were in the slave trade, and the number of Africans taken in captivity to North America was much larger than the number of North Americans held captive in Africa.

Rep. Ron Paul suggested a response to the current piracy problem based on Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress these powers:

• To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
• To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
• To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
• To provide and maintain a navy;
• To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;...

As a libertarian, Paul sought a small-government, market-driven solution: post a large reward for pirates and “grant letters of marque and reprisal” allowing U.S. citizens to compete for that reward. In other words, charter a new generation of privateers.

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall (a historian who’s found a way to make a living with a website) pointed out the flaw in this proposal. During the Revolutionary War people invested their money, ships, and labor in privateering voyages because they hoped to share in the high profits that could come from selling captured British ships and cargoes. But even with a reward, there really isn’t a market for Somali sailors and their small boats.

I think this whole situation just highlights how much things have changed for the U.S. of A. The young men aiming for easy targets off their coast with the support of their families and neighbors back home—those were the American privateers in 1776, the Somali pirates today. The most powerful navy in the world trying to keep shipping lanes open, supply far-flung troops, and joust with other empires—that was the Royal Navy in 1776, the U.S. Navy today.

Crean Brush in “Very Distressed Times”

On 10 Mar 1776, Boston selectman Timothy Newell described a new development in the British authorities’ evacuation of Boston:

Lord’s day P M. Embarking orders are given to deliver Creen Brush esqr. all the woolen and linen goods—

Some persons delivered their goods, others he forced from them, to a great value. Shops, stores, houses, plundered, vessels cut to pieces &c. &c. Very distressed times.

Gen. William Howe had issued this order:

AS Linnen and Woolen Goods are Articles much wanted by the Rebels, and would aid assist them in their Rebellion, the Commander in Chief expects that all good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place:

Any who have not Opportunity to convey their Goods under their own Care, may deliver them on Board the Minerva at Hubbard’s Wharf, to Crean Brush, Esq; mark’d with their Names, who will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners, all unavoidable Accidents accepted.

If after this Notice any Person secretes or keeps in his Possession such Articles, he will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.

Brush had been the British governors’ designated collector of valuable goods since 1 Oct 1775, when Gen. Thomas Gage issued this proclamation:

To CREAN BRUSH, Esquire.

WHEREAS there are large Quantities of Goods, Wares, and Merchandize, Chattels, and Effects, of considerable Value left in the Town of Boston, by Persons who have thought proper to depart therefrom, which are lodged in Dwelling-Houses, and in Shops, and Store-Houses adjoining to, or making Part of Dwelling-Houses.

AND WHEREAS, there is great Reason to apprehend, and the Inhabitants have expressed some Fears concerning the Safety of such Goods, especially as great Part of the Houses will necessarily be occupied by His Majesty’s Troops and the Followers of the Army, as Barracks during the Winter Season; To quiet the Fears of the Inhabitants, and more especially to take all due Care for the Preservation of such Goods, Wares, and Merchandize:

I have thought fit, and do hereby authorize and appoint you the said CREAN BRUSH, to take and receive into your Care, all such Goods, Chattels, and Effects, as may be voluntarily delivered into your Charge, by the Owners of such Goods, or the Person or Persons whose Care they may be left in, on your giving Receipts for the same; and you are to take all due Care thereof, and to deliver said Goods when called upon, to those to whom you shall have given Receipts for the same.

For Americans who found that Brush had taken their stuff, receipts or no, he became one of the most unpopular Loyalist officials of the war. Perhaps because of that unpopularity, it’s not easy to find solid information about him, especially about his family life. Americans were primed to believe the worst.

But this seems to be the most reliable information, collected by John J. Duffy and Eugene A. Coyle in their 2002 article “Crean Brush vs. Ethan Allen: A Winner’s Tale” in Vermont History (available as a P.D.F. download). Crean Brush was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1727. He became a lawyer, a militia officer, a husband, and, in short order, a father and a widow. Leaving his young daughter with relatives, Brush set out for the colony of New York, arriving by 1762.

Over the next few years Brush accumulated grants for an estimated 50,000 acres in the part of New York that was also claimed by New Hampshire—i.e., what became Vermont. In 1770, he moved to Westminster, where he was the local grandee and royal officeholder. From 1773 to 1775 he represented the town in the New York legislature, firmly supporting the royal authorities. In March 1774, a law Brush helped to draft offered rewards of £50-100 for the capture of Ethan Allen and other men resisting New York control over what they called “the New Hampshire grants.”

After the war began, Brush made his way to Boston and offered his services to Gen. Gage. In January 1776, he proposed to raise a regiment of 300 men to patrol the land between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain for the Crown. But his main activity was collecting goods, which to some looked like pillaging under the cover of military law. As to why Howe and Brush were so eager to confiscate “Linnen and Woolen Goods,” cloth was relatively rare and expensive before the invention of spinning and weaving machines.

More about Crean Brush’s adventures in Boston to follow. The portrait above of him as a young man appeared in Benjamin H. Hall’s History of Eastern Vermont, copyrighted in 1857.