Chapter 4 - Public Service, Private Profits

Summary

For the maritime merchants of early nineteenth-century British North America, the prospect of war did not bode well for business. Years of embargoes and trade restrictions had already deprived ship owners and merchants of commercial opportunities on both sides of the border. Meanwhile, conflict in Europe interrupted their regular trade with such neutral nations as Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. War with the United States meant closure of neighbouring markets and risk of capture by American naval vessels and privateers. It posed a serious economic threat to the hundreds of small coastal traders from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia who plied the Eastern seaboard.

The Napoleonic Wars forced the Royal Navy to concentrate most of its strength in Europe, leaving trade along the coast of the Maritime provinces virtually undefended. By the time the United States declared war against Britain in June 1812, only a few naval vessels patrolled the Atlantic station. The navy's North Atlantic fleet, except for one ship-of-the-line, was still in Bermuda. Many Nova Scotians remembered the Revolutionary War when American forces briefly occupied Liverpool, or recalled paying a ransom to keep Lunenburg from being burnt. Anxious to avoid similar attacks on their unprotected shores by swarms of American privateers and a small but determined American navy, Atlantic Canada turned to privateering to defend its shipping. In the thirty months of war, hundreds of merchants and seamen pledged their money, their freedom, and even their lives to take part in the business of privateering fully realizing that success as a privateer could be as elusive as the prizes they sought.

In examining the impact of privateering on the War of 1812, this chapter addresses several aspects of private armed warfare as they applied to the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. While not as strategically important as the Royal Navy, privateering profoundly affected the economic and social life of communities such as Liverpool, which invested heavily in ships, crews, and supplies. In the wartime economy of Atlantic Canada, privateering offered a potentially profitable, albeit transitory, outlet for merchant capital. Smaller in size and fewer in number than their American counterparts, provincial privateers nevertheless averaged nearly the same number of prizes per vessel. They worked carefully within the legal and administrative framework of privateering to ensure as many prizes as possible were upheld in court.