The former Brazilian president is suspected of damaging an ankle bracelet as part of an alleged escape plan.

Episode on privateering in the American Revolution.

Continuing on from the first part of this series, we shift our gaze away from the general impact on war economies of both the host and enemy nation to the roles in which privateers operate. There is a plethora of different ways in which privateers fit into the battlefield itself. As the outfitting of these ships could range from simply ten men on a whaleboat with a swivel gun all the way up to custom built vessels that British captains would recognize as frigates, privateer tactics ran the gambit from ambushes utilizing false flags to direct confrontation with naval vessels. This mix of both unconventional and conventional capabilities naturally make them a hybrid threat. Privateers can share aspects of different fighting forces with which many are familiar. They can be as business oriented as mercenaries, with money being a primary motivator in what they will do. Alongside that, these more professional privateers are seen to go after vulnerable military ships, rather than simply merchants. On the other side of the metaphorical coin, Privateers can function like guerilla fighters. They can be under-gunned and opportunistic while also being hard to tackle and deal with for a conventional force. These things make a privateer a hard thing to categorize as simply an analog to something on land, as they can often fill multiple roles at once. This section will attempt to highlight their part in hybrid warfare, while also demonstrating how these different roles a privateer could fill often clashed or melded together. Hybrid Warfare: Lion Hunters It was April 14th, 1781. Three British Naval vessels exited the Potomac River. A soft warm glow may have been seen, specifically on the Maryland side of the river. One could likely spot plumes of smoke rising out from smoldering husks of buildings. The three vessels had made their way down the river, burning plantations and homes along the way. Captain Thomas Graves of the H.M.S Savage had led the force. Graves had coincidentally encountered the Virginian plantation of George Washington, Mount Vernon, which at the time was being managed by his cousin Lund Washington. After discussing with Lund, Graves promised he would not burn down the arch-traitor’s home. Lund had been so thankful that he had sent sheep, hogs, and other things to the British sailors. When George Washington heard that his home had been spared, though, he considered it an insult. He stated in a letter to Lund that “It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your noncompliance with their request, they had burnt my House, & laid the plantation in ruins.” George Washington doubted their raiding would stop without “the arrival of a superior naval force.” While the Savage’s raid along the Potomac was quite successful, the British sloop-of-war would run into a superior naval force in September of 1781. Still, it would not be a ship from the Continental Navy or the French Navy. September 6th, 1781.  Captain Charles Sterling held fast to one of the railings near the helm of the Savage, waiting for one of his subordinates to hand him his spyglass. They were about 35 miles from Charleston and had just encountered an American vessel. As he was handed his spyglass, he attempted to appraise the vessel. With the intelligence he currently had, he believed it to be an American privateer with only 20 nine-pounders. It was barreling full sail towards them, seeming to think it could go toe-to-toe with the Savage. Likely trusting in his ship’s sixteen six-pounder guns and the fact it was purposefully built for war, he went to meet the vessel. He soon realized his catastrophic mistake as the Savage drew closer. It was the Congress, one of the Americans’ most fearsome privateer vessels. One of which bristled with over twenty twelve-pounders on its main deck alone. Her majesty’s vessel was no longer a hunting lion but rather a lion being hunted. Stirling watched as, in an instant, the Congress tore into the Savage. Within the first hour of the four-hour engagement, Stirling saw crucial components, cannons, and crew of the Savage being blasted away. The Congress would eventually capture the Savage, with the prize’s mast threatening to fall and over thirty-four of its crew, including Sterling, wounded. This first account highlights a few aspects of privateers. First, the more mercenary character of a privateer comes out. For a privateer vessel that was large enough, a British warship represented a target that was even juicier than your average merchant vessel. This was due to the American government at the time being entitled to half of the value of a captured merchant ship but letting a privateer keep the full value of any enemy naval ship they captured. With a bigger payday on the table, certain privateers were much more willing to enter direct combat with an enemy’s navy in a conventional, albeit opportune, way. It is hard to argue that there are few things more conventional than foregoing the false flag strategy that so many privateers liked to use in favor of just charging straight at a British warship in the hope of a payday. Though, unlike mercenaries, they were not paid for simply the battle, but rather their plunder after it. Unfortunately for the case of the Congress, they were unable to get their prize back to port as it was recaptured by the British. Yet, that is just at the level of a battle. At a grander strategic level, something else is revealed by this account. While the Congress had acted conventionally by charging at the Savage outside of Charleston, its home port was all the way in Pennsylvania. In terms of good cruising grounds for British merchant ships, few would think the South Carolinian port of Charleston to be a place for such clientele. Whether or not the Congress had specifically gone down to Charleston to hunt British warships is unknown, but one would wager that it is unlikely. Considering that the British warship had […]

Diferença numérica de petista para Tarcísio, que era de 8 pontos percentuais, agora chega a 12

Abstract. This article uses the histories of two Indigenous cacicas, Isabel and Orocomay, to analyze the assertion of Indigenous sovereignty and territorial control on the islands and mainland coast o...

Thank you to Decklan Wilkerson for this post, the first of a new series. Decklan Wilkerson is a graduate of James Madison University’s history graduate program. Having specialized in studies pertaining to unconventional warfare in his undergrad, he applied that knowledge in his thesis “Raising the Grey Flag: Privateering as a Form of Warfare between the Years of 1775 to 1815”. He asked the question of whether or not the mass usage of privateering was itself a naval strategy that shared links with modern hybrid warfare and if the role of privateers has simply been replaced by more modern avenues. With a wealth of background in unconventional warfare, he was able to draw on past experience in analyzing privateering under a new light. With a mixture of careful analysis and a penchant for vignetting, the thesis won the Carlton B. Smith award for best thesis that year. He also capped off his graduate career with multiple large scale projects, such as assissting with the Histories Along the Blue Ridge project. During said project, he digitized, indexed, and created metadata for the entirety of the Augusta Country Newspaper collection. Along side that, he has been actively engaged with multiple museums in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. While much of what he has done has been proposal writing and research, there are a few exhibits that he has helped to produce, such as a digital one on the changes in the Virginia constitution named “State of Change”. Looking to the future, he intends to attend a PhD program in the United Kingdom as he attempts to flesh out what British privateers were up to during the American Revolution. By doing so, he hopes to fill a hole in the american-centric histography of privateering during the Revolutionary War. Once that is done, he intends to have the entirety of his findings published in a book. Introduction The historiography surrounding American privateers has fluctuated quite a bit between the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the earliest works arguing the importance of American privateers during the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 was A History of American Privateers, written by Edgar Maclay in 1899. Maclay argued that furnishing the history of the US Navy without a full record of privateering would create an incomplete story. Indeed, he did excellent work at the time, assembling the data and stories of privateers that were scattered all over. Specifically, he was able to provide data pertaining to the number of American privateer vessels and their total amount of guns compared to that of the Continental Navy during the American Revolution. That does not mean it is a complete or full set of information, as the number of private vessels can be a difficult thing to tack down when it comes to the American Revolution as compared to the War of 1812’s centralized sources like Niles Weekly Register. He was even so bold at times to suggest that American privateers were the “predominating feature of our early sea power.” Scholars would take his argument rather seriously, with Nathan Miller incorporating privateers into his grand 1927 book, The U.S. Navy: a History. Yet, there seems to have been a bit of a lull for many decades, with the discussion of privateers seemingly being kept to their relationship with great men like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. That is not to say the works done during this time are not helpful to the field, as Willian Clark’s contribution to the story of Benjamin Franklin’s privateers cannot be understated. It would not be until the late 2010s that the topic of privateers would be reinvigorated and not be seen as “simply a sideshow to the exploits of the Continental Navy.” New works once again delve into the topic of privateering, analyzing its contribution to the American way of war. Many have questioned the idea of it simply being legalized piracy and, instead, have explored the often-mixed motivations of American privateers. Scholars like Eric Dolin and Anthony Green would come across very similar findings about the subjects of effectiveness and motivation in their works on the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. For instance, both found a mixture of two motivations for privateers: economic gain and patriotism. Alongside this return to the examination of privateering came some mixing of newer military theories, with recent scholars like Kenneth Moss making mention of the crossover between privateers and hybrid warfare in Marque and Reprisal’s concluding remarks. There are still a few critical questions surrounding American privateers, though. When it comes to detailing the true extent of privateers’ contribution to the Revolutionary War, the focus has primarily focused on economic damage and gain dealt by privateers. This has almost always utilized monetary amounts rather than direct products, as the total monetary amount can be calculated or found in sources much more easily. Looking to petitions, letters, or newspapers can often give a monetary amount, but to judge the total of a specific product that American privateers captured during the revolution has often been something few have attempted. This not only applies to privateers but to other areas of scholarship like American merchants and gunpowder. Even Brian DeLay, in “The Arms Trade and American Revolutions,” argues that the dependence of the Continental Army on foreign arms trade mostly relies on monetary evaluations of arms and powder sent to the rebels. Mentions of war goods brought in by privateers almost always rely on specific “windfalls,” such as the taking of the British supply ship Nancy. As such, there is still a key question of the amount of important goods, such as gunpowder, that American privateers captured during the Revolutionary War. This series of articles seeks to explore many of the avenues other scholars have yet to delve into. For one, a deep dive into privateering utilizing the new theories of hybrid warfare and the grey zone has yet to be undertaken. Alongside that, few have been bold enough to differentiate the mass usage of privateers as its […]

Perícia médica conclui que condições de saúde da deputada são compatíveis com permanência no cárcere