Patriot Pirates by Robert H. Patton

Author:Robert H. Patton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307377555
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four-year-old William Bingham excelled at what he called “the art of uniting war and commerce.” The vast network of privateers he managed in the West Indies unsettled Congress with its unruliness but decimated enemy trade in the region and won him the bitter respect of the British press, which marveled that Bingham’s international status rivaled that of Britain’s ambassador to Paris.

This paradox was integral to the American game plan. Though fewer British transports were lost in the same period, the greater wealth and breadth of British trade corresponded to a higher value of its individual cargoes—the difference between, say, an American sloop carrying barrel staves and a fat British “Indiaman” packed with sugar, textiles, or slaves. “They have much more property to lose than we have,” Robert Morris wrote with typical pragmatism. William Bingham, who knew better than anyone the state of the maritime scorecard, concurred. “Upon casting up accounts, the balance will be immensely in our favor.”

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