Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World by Aja Raden

Author:Aja Raden [Raden, Aja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-30T23:00:00+00:00

Her Majesty’s Not-So-Secret Service

When Elizabeth inherited the throne, England’s infrastructure was falling apart, the country was about to explode, once again, into religious civil war, and it faced numerous military threats from abroad. Worst of all, Philip had used the English coffers to finance war (the disastrous one during which they had lost Calais), and conveniently failed to repay the debt. So England was dead broke. What’s a girl to do? If that girl is Elizabeth I, the answer is: hire pirates.

Or rather privateers. Technically, a privateer is a civilian—in other words, not a sanctioned naval officer—who is nonetheless authorized by the government to attack foreign vessels during wartime. Authorizing privateers was a very effective way for any nation to mobilize extra men and ships during war, without having to keep them on the payroll during times of peace. A pay-for-play navy—in essence—but one that paid itself. Any money or items of value were forfeit to the ship that could obtain them, making privateering a free strong arm for the state and a potentially lucrative payday for the sailors.

The distinction between a privateer and a pirate is really a matter of perspective. For all practical purposes, a pirate and a privateer do the same thing; terrorize, raid, plunder, and sink enemy ships. The only appreciable difference is that privateers generally have formal (sometimes even written) authorization to do what they’re doing. Additionally, privateers give the powers that be a generous cut, making privateers pirates who pay taxes.

Elizabeth wasn’t the first or last monarch to employ privateers during wartime. But her particular innovation was that she covertly authorized them to act during times of relative peace. Elizabeth’s arrangement with her privateers was at first a tacit understanding, and later an explicit (if verbal) contract. She supplemented the English navy with privateers, granting pirates and would-be pirates legal immunity from the rest of the English navy in exchange for their services. She then gave them orders—by which I mean that Elizabeth let it be known that it might please her if they would attack, plunder, and sink every Spanish ship they encountered. She particularly requested that they bring her as many pearls as they could from ships on the Spanish Main.*

While deliberately allowing Anglo-Spanish relations to deteriorate, she generated enormous revenue for England. She took a standard one-third cut of all the plunder, substantially improving on the royal fifth demanded by the Spanish Crown on any New World enterprise. (I guess the graft is higher when what you’re doing is flagrantly illegal.) It was the actual Vatican that finally dubbed her the “patroness of heretics and pirates.”*

These attacks on Spanish ships were also a subversive form of national defense. As one of Elizabeth’s favorite captains, Sir Walter Raleigh, pointed out, whatever hurt Spain made England safer. “Gentleman adventurers,” as these sea dogs were sometimes called, came in every shape and size, from aristocratic second sons, standing to inherit very little, to criminals with nothing to lose. Some were just average men looking for a little excitement—and, of course, a payday.

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