Letters of Marque and Reprisal
Representative Lance Gooden (R, TX) introduced a bill to authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal against certain Russians.
(a)…The President of the United States is authorized and requested to commission, under officially issued letters of marque and reprisal, so many of privately armed and equipped persons and entities as, in the judgment of the President, the service may require, with suitable instructions to the leaders thereof, to employ all means reasonably necessary to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories any yacht, plane, or other asset of any Russian citizen who is on the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury.
(b) Security bonds.—No letter of marque and reprisal shall be issued by the President without requiring the posting of a security bond in such amount as the President shall determine is sufficient to ensure that the letter be executed according to the terms and conditions thereof.
Whether this is a good or idea or not depends on the quality of the list of specially designated nationals. I’m not a fan expropriating the assets of “oligarchs” just because they are Russian. On the other hand, it’s not as if other economic sanctions against Russia are well targeted. Much also depends on whether other nations will recognize letters of marque and reprisal as valid legal instruments, as they once did. Still this is a good chance to re-up my paper on privateers.
I took the liberty in this paper of violating the usual dry, style requirements. Here are the first three paragraphs:
In August 1812, the Hopewell, a 346-ton ship laden with sugar, molasses, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, set sail from the Dutch colony of Surinam. Her captain was pleased because he reckoned that in London the cargo would sell for £40,000—the equivalent of at least several million dollars in today’s economy.1 The Hopewell carried fourteen guns and a crew of twenty-five, and for protection she sailed in a squadron of five other vessels. It was difficult, however, to keep a squadron together in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, and on August 13 the Hopewell became separated from her sisters.
Two days later her crew spotted another ship, armed and approaching rapidly. At three hundred yards, the approaching schooner fired a round off the Hopewell’s bow and called for her to present her papers and prepare to be boarded, but the captain was not about to give up his cargo so easily, and he opened fire. A hail of musket and cannon balls tore into the Hopewell in return. Broadside after broadside was exchanged as the more nimble adversary bore down repeatedly. At last, the Hopewell could fight no longer, and her captain ordered the flag to be struck.
The attacker, an American schooner out of Baltimore, was neither a pirate ship nor a ship of the U.S. Navy, then next to nonexistent. In fact, it is best to think of the Comet not as a ship at all, but as a business enterprise. The Comet’s owners and its crew, from Captain Thomas Boyle down to the lowliest cabin boy, were hunting the Atlantic for prizes: British commercial ships to be captured, condemned, and sold for profit. Piracy? Not at all. The Comet was a privateer, a ship licensed by the United States, then at war with Great Britain, to harass British vessels and confiscate their cargoes. The privateer’s license was no mere formality. Without the license and a legal proceeding, the privateer could not sell its prizes legally. More important, courts throughout the world recognized a privateer’s license as valid. Pirates, in contrast, were barbarians and operated outside the rule of law; if caught, they would be hanged. Even the British, then the enemy, recognized that a privateer acted within the law of nations, and its captain and crew, if captured, would be accorded the same rights as captured officers and crew of the U.S. Navy.
Read the whole thing.