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A letter of marque and reprisal (French: lettre de marque; lettre de course) was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury.
Although not French Navy personnel, corsairs were considered legitimate combatants in France (and allied nations), provided the commanding officer of the vessel was in possession of a valid letter of marque (lettre de marque or lettre de course, the latter giving corsairs their name), and the officers and crew conducted themselves according to ...
Sir Andrew Barton, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, followed the example of his father, who had been issued with letters of marque by James III of Scotland to prey upon English and Portuguese shipping in 1485; the letters in due course were reissued to the son. Barton was killed following an encounter with the English in 1511.
The holders of letters of marque were also required to be the actual owners of the ships; this was to discourage speculation in the letters. [11] CSS Mananass {1904 drawing} An anomalous feature of the legislation governing Confederate privateering was that it allowed attacking enemy warships.
The formal commission bestowed upon a naval vessel, and the Letter of Marque and Reprisal granted to private merchant vessels converting them into naval auxiliaries, qualified them to take enemy property as the armed hands of their sovereign, and to share in the proceeds.
Receiving word that the French would lift the Decrees by 1 November, she waited there, only leaving for Bordeaux when she would arrive after 1 November. She arrived at the Gironde, where she waited for two weeks in quarantine. When she sailed into Bordeaux, local French authorities still detained her for coming from a British port.
Until 1620, for example, to apply for a Letter of Marque in England a shipowner had to submit to the Admiralty Court an estimate of his actual losses.[footnote] Later the element of retaliation fell away, and a Letter of Marque and Reprisal became simply a general license to cruise in search of enemy vessels, which a country issued after ...
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