A book about Washington's "Gallant Little Navy"

books:


	• Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution Robert H. Patton Pantheon, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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new perspective, well told

This was very enlightening for me. I got a totally new sense of the down-and-dirty Revolutionary world. There are ocean battles in it, but if that's all you're looking for there are probably other books to go to. This one has a much wider scope that includes business, naval strategy, politics, even the slave trade. It features an array of high and low characters, and most of them aren't household names, which I thought was a good thing but others may disagree. I think the storytelling is really artful and smooth, because in a pretty short narrative it presents all sorts of scenes from Massachusetts to the Caribbean to Paris and London, but it weaves them together well, and then it ends with a couple of teenage seamen whose adventures capture the suffering, persistence, and sheer guts of the American patriots. This book turned out to be a much more significant portrayal of history than I'd thought when I first bought it.

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A book about Washington's "Gallant Little Navy"

In "Patriot Pirates", Robert H. Patton delivers a detailed study of the business of American Privateers during the years of 1775 through 1783. Patton's book illustrates that in most cases, these men were driven more by the lure of a quick fortune than by patriotism.

Patton's introduction lays the strategic environment under which the America's privateer industry began. Patton attributes the beginning of the enterprise to a quote from George Washington during his siege of Boston in 1775, "Finding we were not likely to do much in the land way, I fitted out several privateers, or rather armed vessels, in behalf of the Continent." Beginning as an aside to the siege of Boston, these Privateers were sanctioned by Congress and they soon affected the entire Atlantic seaboard and the Caribbean by attacking English and loyalist shipping wherever it may have been.

Patton's thorough research is apparent as he describes the efforts of the more successful businessmen like Rhode Island's John Brown; Robert Morris; Silas Deane; and Benjamin Franklin. Along with these American heroes, Patton also recounts the actions of Edward Bancroft, the most famous double-agent of the Revolution. Interspersed with this biographical information are stories of the actual ships and Captains who made life miserable for the British. "Patriot Pirates" recalls their greatest successes and the horrors of the British prison ships in Wallabout Bay, New York.

The book does an outstanding job of describing the international intrigue among England, France, Holland, Spain and the rebellious American Colonies. As neutral parties to the war, France and Holland could not accept the illicit goods captured from English ships. Patton describes the how industry bent these rules to the benefit of everyone except the British.

During the war, France created the front company, Hortalez and Company, to provide loans to purchase arms to the fledgling American army. Not only does Patton describe how this worked, but he also illustrates how this company was connected to the downfall of Louis XVI during the French Revolution.

The book is very well researched, and includes copious references to additional reading, but I would still recommend a map of the Caribbean to have at your side as you read this book. For readers like myself who can't tell the difference between a sloop and a frigate, it might be helpful to have a naval almanac too. "Patriot Pirates" is a fascinating look at the business of Privateering and its effects on International Relations.

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Good but not really good

This book is told in chronological, geographic vignettes which follow various people with quick biographical sketches as they engaged in privateering. There is little in the way of overview on privateering in general or its overall impact on the war. What is there is scattered throughout the book. Patriot Pirates would benefit from a more focused approach: a survey of privateering; or a thesis to be proved- privateering was critical to weakening the British war effort; even overview chapter. The narratives could have been better employed as highlights to these approaches. As is, it is an easy read with some good information on privateering and a solid bibliography for further reading. Much of the non-privateering information will be repetitive to even casual students of the era.

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reviews: page 1, 2

They were legalized pirates empowered by the Continental Congress to raid and plunder, at their own considerable risk, as much enemy trade as they could successfully haul back to America?s shores; they played a central role in American?s struggle for independence and later turned their seafaring talents to the slave trade; embodying the conflict between enterprise and morality central to the American psyche.

In Patriot Pirates, Robert H. Patton, grandson of the battlefield genius of World War II, writes that during America?s Revolutionary War, what began in 1775 as a New England fad--converting civilian vessels to fast-sailing warships, and defying the Royal Navy?s overwhelming firepower to snatch its merchant shipping--became a massive seaborne insurgency that ravaged the British economy and helped to win America?s independence. More than two thousand privately owned warships were commissioned by Congress to prey on enemy transports, seize them by force, and sell the cargoes for prize money to be divided among the privateer?s officers, crewmen, and owners.

Patton writes how privateering engaged all levels of Revolutionary life, from the dockyards to the assembly halls; how it gave rise to an often cutthroat network of agents who sold captured goods and sparked wild speculation in purchased shares in privateer ventures, enabling sailors to make more money in a month than they might otherwise earn in a year.

As one naval historian has observed, ?The great battles of the American Revolution were fought on land, but independence was won at sea.?

Benjamin Franklin, then serving at his diplomatic post in Paris, secretly encouraged the sale of captured goods in France, a calculated violation of neutrality agreements between France and Britain, in the hopes that the two countries would come to blows and help take the pressure off American fighters.

Patton writes about those whose aggressive speculation in privateering promoted the war effort: Robert Morris--a financier of the Revolution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Continental Congress who helped to fund George Washington?s army, later tried (and acquitted) for corruption when his deals with foreign merchants and privateers came to light, and emerged from the war as one of America?s wealthiest men . . . William Bingham? John R. Livingston--scion of a well-connected New York family who made no apologies for exploiting the war for profit, calling it ?a means of making my fortune.? He worried that peace would break out too soon. (?If it takes place without a proper warning,? said Livingston, ?it may ruin us.?) Vast fortunes made through privateering survive to this day, among them those of the Peabodys, Cabots, and Lowell's of Massachusetts, and the Derbys and Browns of Rhode Island.

A revelation of America?s War of Independence, a sweeping tale of maritime rebel-entrepreneurs bent on personal profit as well as national freedom.

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