conflicted. The private armies of the Middle Ages all too often turned into bands of brigands or rebels. In this century, during the rise of the labor movement, private police forces were often hard to distinguish from goon squads.

Or consider the naval privateers, who flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They, too, were private citizens pursuing private gain and performing a public service in the process, just as the trial lawyers claim to do. In their case they raided the enemy’s commerce during wartime. It was a very dangerous business, of course, but the rewards, like those from a major lawsuit, could be staggering.

An inferior naval power, unable to match the enemy ship for ship, usually has no option but to employ a strategy of commerce raiding—what the French, who practiced it often, call “ la guerre de course .” The U-boat campaigns of the two world wars show just how devastatingly effective commerce raiding can be as a naval strategy.

Earlier privately owned commerce raiders sometimes were just as effective, and, of course, didn’t cost the government anything. But many of the early privateers—Captain Kidd for instance —allowed their self-interest to lead them over the very fine line between privateering and piracy. Later privateers also sometimes turned their wartime assets into equally dubious peacetime activities.

In the War of 1812, for instance, the United States was certainly an inferior naval power. And, while the early frigate battles against the British were thrilling victories that owed much to superior American ship design, they affected the balance of power not one whit. By 1814, the American Navy was bottled up in port, as was nearly all our commercial shipping.

Only the privateers were still contesting the seas—and doing a splendid job of it. British insurance rates skyrocketed that year, reaching as high as 30 percent of the value of the ship for voyages between Liverpool and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Even in the Irish Sea—British territorial waters—insurance rates were 13 percent. The Naval Chronicle, a semi-official British publication, reported that “the depredations committed on our commerce by American … privateers, has attained an extent beyond all former precedents.”

Again, the reason for this success was in large measure ship design. The Baltimore clipper, a lean, deephulled schooner that had originated in this country, made a nearly perfect privateer. Exceptionally fast, it was more than a match for the tubby merchant ships of the day. Equally important, it could also outsail anything it couldn’t outfight. And it could accommodate a very large number of men while being handled by very few. This allowed many of the men to be deployed as prize crews, sailing the captured ships into friendly ports to be sold along with their cargoes.

One of these privateers, the Prince de Neufchâtel, had a short, brilliant, and highly profitable career, one that might have been summoned from the vasty deep of Patrick O’Brian’s imagination, except that it happens to

be true.

The Prince de Neufchâtel was built in New York in 1812–13 and was owned by a New York woman named Flory Charretton, whose son-in-law, J. Ordronaux, captained the ship. The Prince was 110 feet long, with only a 25-foot beam. Even in heavy seas she was capable of more than thirteen knots and under ideal conditions might have reached twenty, a breathtaking speed for a sailing ship.

The American government granted her owner a letter-of-marque (a license to operate as a privateer) on October 28, 1813, and she soon sailed for Europe, slipping into the French port of Cherbourg. Fitted out as a privateer there, she evaded the British blockade in March 1814 and quickly snapped up nine prizes in the English Channel. In June, she took six more in as many days and spent the rest of the summer in European waters, capturing merchantmen and leading the Royal Navy a merry chase, easily out-sailing no fewer than seventeen British men-of-war who pursued her. Altogether the Prince de Neufchâtel profited her owners and crew that summer to the tune of three million dollars, a great fortune by the standards of the day.

By September, she had recrossed the Atlantic and, again running a British blockade, entered Boston Harbor for a refit. Soon back at sea, the Prince de Neufchâtel was becalmed off Nantucket in early October with a prize in company (and more than two hundred thousand dollars in booty in her hold) when a British frigate, the Endymion , sighted her. Had the Endymion been able to bring her vastly greater armament to bear, she would have made short work of the Prince de Neufchâtel. But after she gave chase, she, too, was becalmed.

Shortly after dark, the Endymion launched a cutting-out expedition, loading her five ship’s boats with 111 men, perhaps a third of her crew, in order to surround and capture the privateer. Although the Prince could carry as many as 150 men, so many had been detailed as prize crews that there were only 37 men on board fit to fight.

But, while outnumbered three to one, Captain Ordronaux vowed to blow his ship up rather than surrender, and his crew fought with extraordinary ferocity. Theodore Roosevelt, in his utterly splendid The Naval War of 1812, described the “desperate and bloody struggle”: “Men fought like wild beasts and grappled with each other in deadly embrace. Knives, pistols, cutlasses, marlin spikes, belaying pins—anything that could deal an effective blow—were in requisition, while even bare fists, fingernails, and teeth came into play.”

The battle was over in twenty minutes, when the surviving British called for quarter and were taken

prisoner. Of the five attacking boats, one was sunk, three adrift beyond recovery, and one was captured. The British losses were 33 killed and 37 wounded, and 30 made prisoners; only 11 escaped. Of the Prince de Neufchâtel ’s crew of 37, seven were killed and 24 were wounded, 15 severely. Only six able-bodied sailors were left to handle the ship. Regardless, Ordronaux was able to land his prisoners and wounded on Nantucket and make it back to Boston safely with his prize and booty intact.

A few months later, under a different captain, the Prince de Neufchâtel was captured when she encountered three British frigates in a fierce storm and lost a spar trying to escape. So impressed was the British commander with the Prince that he ordered her to England to have her lines taken off. Unfortunately, when she was refloated in dry dock, she hung up on the sill of the dock gates and broke her back.

But, though the Prince de Neufchâtel came to an early end after a glorious career, many of her sister privateers survived and entered a far less glorious form of enterprise after the war. For, alas, the very qualities that made them successful as privateers—great speed and the ability to hold large numbers of human beings—made them all too useful as slavers.