Overview

The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America's first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation's character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. The men who owned the ships, as well as their captains and crew, would divide the profits of a successful cruise?and suffer all the more if their ship was captured or sunk, with privateersmen facing hellish conditions on British prison hulks, where they were treated not as enemy combatants but as pirates. Some Americans viewed them similarly, as cynical opportunists whose only aim was loot. Yet Dolin shows that privateersmen were as patriotic as their fellow Americans, and moreover that they greatly contributed to the war's success: diverting critical British resources to protecting their shipping, playing a key role in bringing France into the war on the side of the United States, providing much-needed supplies at home, and bolstering the new nation's confidence that it might actually defeat the most powerful military force in the world. Creating an entirely new pantheon of Revolutionary heroes, Dolin reclaims such forgotten privateersmen as Captain Jonathan Haraden and Lieutenant William Gray, putting their exploits, and sacrifices, at the very center of the conflict. Abounding in tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents this nation's first war as we have rarely seen it before.

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9781631498251

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[S]pirited account . . . [T]he book's greatest strength are the up-close portraits of the sailors themselves . . . [T]his is a well-researched and thoroughly entertaining tribute to men who 'stepped forward and risked their lives to help make [the United States] a reality.'--Publishers Weekly

Dolin's valuable achievement in recognizing and honoring these sailors' oft-ignored contributions to American independence more fully fleshes out American naval history.--Mark Knoblauch, Booklist, starred review [S]pirited account . . . [T]he book's greatest strength are the up-close portraits of the sailors themselves . . . [T]his is a well-researched and thoroughly entertaining tribute to men who 'stepped forward and risked their lives to help make [the United States] a reality.'--Publishers Weekly The bestselling maritime historian returns with a study of privateering activity during the Revolutionary War and its role in bolstering the Colonial cause . . . In this exciting narrative, Dolin, a 2020 Kirkus Prize finalist for A Furious Sky, demonstrates how privateering was a key element in America's ability to secure independence . . . The author digs deep into the whole enterprise . . . In this characteristically well-researched history, Dolin describes the vital activities of two main types of privateers . . . The author also explores in fascinating detail the desperate circumstances of captured Americans aboard British prison ships . . . A thrilling, unique contribution to the literature on the American Revolution.-- Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling and award-winning author of numerous works in maritime history, including Leviathan, Rebels at Sea, and Black Flags, Blue Waters. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

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