Miguel Enriquez went from shoemaker in Puerto Rico to one of the wealthiest men in the New World, knighted by the King of Spain and commanding some 300 ships, all through a government license to raid enemy shipping. This deep dive explains how privateers operated in the gray zone between navies and pirates, using letters of marque and a bureaucratic system of prize law, vice admiralty courts, and auctions to divide the spoils.

The episode traces how broke governments relied on privateering, from Elizabeth I’s sea dogs to Bermuda’s fast cedar sloops and the Puritan raiding base on Providence Island. It covers the roughly 55,000 Americans who served as privateers during the Revolution, the horrors of British prison ships, why the founders left privateers out of the national story, the War of 1812, and how convoys, steam power, and the 1856 Declaration of Paris ended the practice.

• How Captain William Kidd was hanged for piracy after losing the paperwork for his prizes
• Why the Piracy Act of 1717 reclassified piracy from treason to a crime against property
• How Bermudians aided the American rebels with gunpowder, then took 130 prizes in a single year
• The economics of a War of 1812 privateer, plus Thomas Boyle and Jean Lafitte at New Orleans
• How the state monopoly on violence and professional navies made privateering obsolete