Legalized piracy -- the tale of the Snap Dragon

Decal created by Sharon O'Connor for 
her sailboat named for a legendary privateer

The two previous pirates I wrote about are joined by many others who made life miserable on the eastern coast of Canada during the Golden Age of piracy -- from the late 17th century to about the middle of the 18th century. I picked the particular duo because of the horrible death and after-death of the one and the horrible life led by the other.

But I've had a request to tell the tale of one of the most successful privateers of the 19th nineteenth century -- Otway Burns, a North Carolinian who raided shipping from South America to Newfoundland until his ship, the Snap Dragon, was captured off the shores of Newfoundland in 1814. 

Burns was born just before the Revolutionary War, though the exact date seems to be uncertain, and lived to the middle of the 19th century and was a native of North Carolina. During his 70+ years, he worked as the captain of a merchant ship, harassed British shipping during the War of 1812, built a successful business empire, and served as a state legislator. He married three times, each of his wives preceding him in death, and had two children by his first wife, a son, Owen, and a daughter, Harriet. [1]

His career as a merchantman captain came to an abrupt halt with the commencement of the already mentioned war. With a partner, he purchased a small ship, outfitted as most merchant ships were, with minimal armaments. They renamed the boat Snap Dragon, sometimes referred to as Snap-Dragon, and applied to the U.S. government for letters of marque. Upon receipt of the documents, they sold shares in the ship to investors.

For the uninitiated, letters of marque are issued by governments authorizing captains of ships to harass and capture foreign shipping, usually during times of war. Captured ships would be taken to a nation's ports, the circumstances of capture reviewed, and if the capture passed muster, sold along with whatever cargo they carried at auction. The government often took a share of the money, with most of the proceeds going to the captain and crew. 

Now, you also need to know that letters of marque are enshrined in Article 1 of the American Constitution. The practice was outlawed by international treaty in 1856. though technically the U.S. still has the authority to do it.

Captains so authorized, and their ships, are called privateers, and they served the purpose, especially for America, of expanding and supplementing the nation's naval presence. Not everyone was on board with the concept, though.

When Burns sailed into port in New Bern, NC, he began recruiting crewmen. Local political leaders who believed privateering to be glorified piracy would find out who the recruits were and lend them money. Once indebted, the crewmen would be arrested for being in debt. If you don't have enough crew, you can't sail, and you can't terrorize British shipping. These local pols may have been leftover British sympathizers.

Warrants were issued for the arrest of crewmen who had returned to the ship,and a group of constables were dispatched in a boat to arrest the debtors. Burns ordered his men to overturn the boat, and the constables were forced to swim ashore. A lawyer then began stirring up trouble and called the ship, its master and crew licensed robbers. When Burns heard of this, he rowed ashore, thrashed the lawyer and threw him into a nearby river. 

The Snap Dragon and its crew made three long voyages, sometimes cooperating with other privateers, sometimes going it alone, even if not always intentionally. Burns and his crew accounted for upwards of a hundred captures, though the exact number is unknown because some of his logs has been lost.

 Some of the captured ships would be retaken, but the prize amounts for the ships sometimes reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in a couple of instances, more than a million. I can't say whether the numbers cited by his chroniclers are adjusted for inflation, but I don't think so. After all, the book's contents are less than 100 years removed from the events.

Burns' range extended from near the equator in South America, through the Caribbean, along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. to the maritimes and Newfoundland in Canada. 

He fearlessly attacked ships that were larger and much better armed than his. Sometimes his gambit paid off, sometimes he was forced to retreat. In one incident noted in his logs, he attacked a much larger British naval ship that had tried to pass itself off as a merchantman. The battle raged for hours and only ended after the British  ship managed to carry off Snap Dragon's bowsprit, which led to its foremast collapsing. Burns commented that had the ship not lost its bowsprit, he was certain he'd have won.

His primary strategy, as I understand it, was to pick a target, sail for it until he caught up to it, and ram it. His crew, which was much larger than needed to actually sail the ship, would board the enemy ship and overpower its crew. Burn's crews could be as large as a 100 or more men, and most of the merchant ships would have from 20-60 men. 

During the ship's last tour, Burns' health diminished to the point he relinquished command to one of his officers. (I have more than one name for the officer, so I can't say who it was with certainty.) The British had disguised one of their ships as a merchantman in another effort to trick the Snap Dragon's crew and took up a position off Halifax. 

This time the ruse worked. Snap Dragon took an initial broadside, and though she was much better armed than usual, she was no match for the British ship. Her substitute captain was killed and many of the crew wounded. The remaining crew struck the ship's flag and surrendered. Ship and crew were taken to England, where the crew was imprisoned. No one really knows what happened to the ship.

Much later Burns built another boat and named her Snap Dragon, She was a much smaller boat that featured an innovation called a center board. For non-sailors a centerboard is, well, a board that extends through the, um, center of the ship's hull. This substitutes for a keel and makes the ship better suited for sailing in shallower waters. 

And more than 100 years later, my wife had a small sailing craft with a center board that she named Snap Dragon. 

[1] For this post, most of the information is summarized from the contents of the book Captain Otway Burns, Patriot, Privateer and Legislator published in New York in 1905. This is a collection of materials compiled by one of Burns' descendants and is available through the Library of Congress, Google Books and Internet Archive, among other outlets.