Letters of Marque

Why is it a good idea to be an investment banker, lawyer, or accountant? Because all of them have in some sense a "letter of marque." If you don't have a letter of marque, you are a pirate or a criminal or a privateer, which for the state is often hard to distinguish. There is the observation that the lower class has it bad, that they are treated poorly. What may be at play is that with the world population increasing tremendously with China and India stressing the competition for resources, the significance of having a letter of marque has grown tremendously. A man can try to be a privateer (or corsair or buccaneer), but it comes at great risk. First, he has no support if anything goes wrong. If anything goes wrong and he is without assets, he has no way of rebuilding the assets because he is bereft of a letter of marque. As a privateer, he will be sold to slavery.

Fight bravely, gentlemen, but remember the value of having a letter of marque. Are you good at negotiating with pirates? If so, the value of the letter of marque is not very high. Yet a letter of marque is not perfect armor. Zymen Danseker was on a sponsored mission:

"He resided in Marseilles for a year when French authorities asked him to lead an expedition against the corsairs. Despite rumors of his capture, he returned to France later that same year. In 1615 he was called up by Louis XIII to negotiate the release of French ships being held by Yusuf Dey in Tunis. According to the account of William Lithgow,^[6][7] Dansker was lead ashore in a ruse by Yusuf, captured by janissaires, and beheaded.^[8]"


And there are examples of men who still conduct missions without letters of mark and it leads to tomfoolery:


"Ward and his men sailed to the Mediterranean where he was able to acquire a warship of thirty-two guns which was renamed The Gift^[6] and began attacking merchantmen for the next two years. While at Salé, Morocco in 1605 several English and Dutch sailors, including Richard Bishop and Anthony Johnson, joined Ward's crew and the following year (August, 1606) Ward arranged with Cara Osman^[7] to use Tunis as a base of operations in exchange for which Osman would get first refusal of all goods.^[7] From this base, Jack Ward was easily able to capture several valuable merchant ships, including the 60 ton Reniera e Soderina.
Following his return to Tunis in June 1607, Ward was informed during the winter that the now rotted Reniera e Soderina had begun to sink. With several of his officers, Ward deserted the ship to one of the French prizes he had captured. The Reniera e Soderina later sank off Greece as 400 crew members, of which 250 were Muslim and 150 were English, were lost. Ironically, Ward lost his own ship, as well as two others captured by Venice, several weeks later.
While many in Tunisia were angered by Ward's desertion of the Muslim sailors aboard the Reniera e Soderina, Uthman Bey offered Ward a safe haven.^[3] Ward however asked James I of England for a royal pardon which was refused and he reluctantly returned to Tunis. Uthman Bey kept his word and Ward was granted protection by Tunis.
During the next year ballads and pamphleteers condemned John Ward for turning corsair. He accepted Islam along with his entire crew, changed his name to Yusuf Reis and married an Italian woman while he continued to send money to his English wife. In 1612 a play called A Christian Turn'd Turk was written about his conversion by the English dramatist Robert Daborne.
Ward continued raiding Mediterranean shipping, eventually commanding a whole fleet of corsairs, and whose flagship was a Venetian sixty-gunner. He profited by his piracy, retiring to Tunis to live a life of opulent comfort until 1622, when at the age of 70 he reportedly died from the plague."