Privateer: Did you mean...?

Piracy has involved many nationalities over the centuries, but one of the prominent groups in the medieval and early modern periods was the French pirates, who terrorised the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. French writers often...

Thomas Cavendish (1560-1592 CE) was an Elizabethan mariner and privateer who famously circumnavigated the globe in 1586-88 CE, only the third voyage to do so and the first to set sail with that specific intention. Returning rich from Spanish...

Captain William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) was a Scottish privateer turned pirate who, despite only ever capturing one significant prize ship, has become legendary thanks to the persistent rumour he buried a fantastic treasure that nobody has yet...

While there have been pirates and privateers of all nationalities, some Dutch mariners were particularly troublesome in the early modern period, targeting, in particular, the Spanish Main but also shipping in the eastern Atlantic and the...

According to UNESCO, an estimated three million shipwrecks are scattered in the oceans’ deep canyons, trenches, and coral reefs and remain undiscovered. These shipwrecks preserve historical information and provide clues about how people lived...

The Manila galleons were Spanish treasure ships which transported precious goods like silk, spices, and porcelain from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, between 1565 and 1815. The Atlantic treasure fleets then shipped some of...

The Spanish Main refers, in its widest sense, to the Spanish Empire in the Americas from Florida in the north to the northern coast of Brazil in the south, including the Caribbean. The term was initially more limited and referred only to...

The sea dogs, as they were disparagingly called by the Spanish authorities, were privateers who, with the consent and sometimes financial support of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE), attacked and plundered Spanish colonial settlements...

The treasure ports of the Spanish Main such as Cartagena, Portobelo, Panama, and Veracruz were used to collect the riches the Spanish Empire had extracted from the Americas, ready for transport in the two annual treasure fleets back to Europe...

A statue of the French privateer Robert Surcouf (active 1794-1810), Saint-Malo, France. Sculpted by Alfred Caravanniez.