These treasure-hunting pirates already came from riches

Official cooperation between leaders and pirates has a long and often sordid history. The Elizabethan Sea Dogs are an interesting account of Atlantic piracy in the 16th century. Commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603) to augment English naval presence in the region, they played a major role in the development of the English Atlantic and earned a villainous reputation among the Spanish, whose fleets were their main target.

Sea Dogs operated as privateers by the authority of the queen. Two things separated the Sea Dogs and other privateers from pirates: perspective and a letter of marque. A letter of marque, issued from the crown, made plundering Spanish ships technically legal under English law, despite the two countries not officially being at war—though the Spanish saw it very differently. In the case of the English, a letter of marque wasn’t always required.

Attempts to regulate piracy in the Elizabethan era were halfhearted at best. As long as the attack was on foreign ships, particularly Spanish ones, the crown tended to overlook a missing letter of marque. This was particularly true among the gentry and local officials in England’s West Country. Although local officials were tasked with policing piracy, they regularly released suspected pirates or failed to apprehend them in the first place. In the eyes of many English subjects, the Sea Dogs’ actions were considered patriotic, a means of promoting the Protestant religion and supplementing the burgeoning Royal Navy. The Spanish, though, viewed the men as pirates and treated them as such in Spanish courts.

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Pirate sponsorship

Anyone with a thirst for Spanish pillage and a ship at their disposal could seek a commission from Queen Elizabeth I or a sponsorship from investors, companies, or shareholders to prey on Spanish shipping, but those who took to the seas typically came from the higher rungs of society. Sirs Francis Drake (1540–1596), John Hawkins (1532–1595), Martin Frobisher (ca 1535–1594), Walter Raleigh (ca 1554–1618), and other prominent Sea Dogs were born into or raised as nobility.

With backgrounds and connections to the maritime world, they fostered an expertise for plundering on the high seas, which came to be known as “discriminating piracy.” They operated throughout the Atlantic world, particularly among the Spanish colonies in the so-called New World. The Spanish bestowed these privateers with the moniker Sea Dogs, believing them no better than mongrels doing their masters’ bidding.

(Forget 'walking the plank.' Pirate portrayals are more fantasy than fact.)

Making a profit as a privateer was not guaranteed; in fact, on a privateering vessel, the crew very rarely made a wage. Instead, they operated on a system of “prey for pay,” in which they received a portion of the goods plundered during their attack. This system incentivized the seizure of ships of any nation, even their own.

When not backed by Queen Elizabeth I herself, the Sea Dogs’ ventures were often sponsored by third parties, allowing the crown to distance itself from the privateers while bolstering national interests. One prominent instance is Thomas White’s 1560 venture on the Barbary Coast of North Africa; ignoring his sponsor’s directives, he seized two Spanish treasure ships carrying silver from Spain’s American colonies and took them back to England. Seeing the profitability of the attack, authorities in London overlooked the lack of a letter of marque and the clear act of piracy, allowing both White’s investors and the English government, which was entitled to a share of the booty, to benefit from White’s rogue decision.

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Privateering successes

Despite the Spanish crown’s best attempts at fortifying its colonial ports, the English made inroads into Spanish territory. Sir Francis Drake made the Spanish a favorite target and attacked their most vulnerable points.

In 1572, he embarked on a venture to capture Nombre de Dios, an important Spanish-occupied city in Panama where silver and gold treasure from Peru was brought to be picked up by Spanish fleets. He arrived with just 73 men on two small vessels, the Pascha and the Swan. He attempted to capture the town but was injured after a skirmish with a local Spanish militia, forcing him and his men to withdraw. He remained in the area for the next year, even joining up with French buccaneer Guillaume Le Testu to successfully seize £20,000 in gold and silver from a mule train.

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Drake continued to demonstrate the weaknesses in Spanish defenses when he sailed a fleet of seven large ships and 22 smaller vessels throughout the Spanish West Indies between 1585 and 1586. They sacked and plundered Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands; captured one of the richest cities in all of the Caribbean, Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola; and occupied Cartagena, Colombia. Finally, in 1586, Drake and his men destroyed St. Augustine, Florida, before returning to England.

In addition to the goods and gold that Drake and his men seized during the Great Expedition of 1585–86, they also made away with more than 135,000 ducats, or gold trade coins, from ransoming the cities and their inhabitants. Raids against the Spanish continued until England and Spain made peace, thus concluding the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604), but the Sea Dog legacy lived on.

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