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  • Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick
  • D.A. Sutherland
Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick. Faye Kert. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2005. Pp. 105, illus., b&w, paper $14.95

This book is published by the New BrunswickMilitary Heritage Project, which, according to its website, has been designed 'to promote and foster interest in the military side of our provincial history.' The target audience is the general public, not the academic community and thus must do without such things as historiographic orientation, footnotes, a listing of primary sources, and a full bibliography. Emphasis is placed on providing the reader with an engaging narrative, colourful anecdotes, and rich illustration, with the result being a volume that is entertaining but not particularly innovative or analytical.

The focus is on the 'war at sea' along New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy coastal waters during the War of 1812 and, later, the American Civil War. As the title suggests, the book chronicles attacks on American [End Page 529] shipping undertaken by colonials, acting legally as privateers and occasionally beyond the law as pirates.

Approximately two-thirds of the text deals with New Brunswick's participation in the War of 1812, when colonials were both victims and aggressors in hostilities waged with the United States. It was, however, a situation far short of total warfare. Both sides found it strategically vital to trade with one another, thus fighting coexisted with a massive amount of smuggling, most of it along the inshore waters separating New Brunswick from Maine.

For colonials, dealing in contraband held more attraction than arming private vessels to raid American commerce, but in 1812–13 a total of ten privateers sailed out of New Brunswick ports. Many seem to have used their commissions – letters of marque issued by the Crown – as a complement to smuggling, but a few, most notably a tiny sloop named the Dart, did bring in a lucrative number of prizes. But once the Royal Navy had blockaded the American coast, pickings grew so thin that New Brunswick abandoned privateering as a money-loser.

The main value of this account is to bring New Brunswick out from the shadow of Nova Scotia, the main base of privateering activity in the region throughout the war. Readers, for example, learn that Nova Scotia's most successful privateer, the Liverpool Packet, was, for a time, captained by Caleb Seeley of Saint John. And the only surviving logbook from a War of 1812 colonial privateer belonged to the Dart, whose story is told in vivid detail in this volume (readers should note that the entire log is now available on a website maintained by the Nova Scotia Archives).

A scarcity of records means that most of the privateers remain anonymous, their motivation speculated to be more a quest for profit and adventure than an expression of patriotic zeal. Privateering's chief legacy, according to Kert, was to help lay the foundations for New Brunswick's postwar prosperity. That conclusion tends to overlook how Napoleonic-era warfare spawned the timber trade, which by the 1840s had become the backbone of New Brunswick's economy.

In a somewhat awkward shift, the last third of the text jumps ahead to the 1860s, to tell the story of how Confederate agents, some of them from New Brunswick, captured the Chesapeake, an American coastal steamship running between New York and Portland. Armed with pistols and dubious credentials, they ran their capture into Maritime waters, intent on refuelling with coal and returning south to operate as a commercial raider. [End Page 530]

Rebel incompetence and Union naval power quickly brought the affair to an ignominious end at Halifax Harbour, late in 1863. The ragged band of privateer-pirates all escaped, thanks to the pro Confederate sympathies rampant in the region. Whether, as is suggested, this incident contributed to the drive for Confederation is questionable. Ambition for intercolonial railway construction and fear unleashed by the postwar decision of Congress to impose tariffs on colonial imports did more to shape regional politics than the antics of the would-be liberators of the Chesapeake.

In conclusion, while this is a handsome little book that will...

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