“Been to Disney World one too many times? Have we, Captain Ron?”During the American Revolution, George Washington, while serving as head of the Continental army during the siege of Boston in 1775, started using pirates to help attack the British where they were most vulnerable on the sea. “Finding that we were not likely to do much in the land way, I fitted out several privateers, or rather armed vessels, on behalf of the Continent. With an offer of a percentage of spoils as an inducement, the call for citizen sailors to hijack inbound supply ships tapped the same vein of self-interest and comradeship that had led the colonies to seek independence in the first place.” Although private piracy proved detrimental to the Royal Navy, it ultimately helped turn the British public against the war.

“He said gorilla. Not guerrilla. Guer, go. HUGE difference kids,” Martin Harvey

A pirate is a seaman who threatens, seizes, or destroys any ship at high seas and often even harbors at the shore. Besides, they have been involved in many other criminal activities, such as piracy and the slave trade. Without any legal rights, the pirates are doing it for personal reasons. And they were regarded as criminals in all countries because those attacks were illegal acts. Piracy was punishable by death almost everywhere during the times when it was at its height. The critical difference between them and the privateers or buccaneers, about whom we can also claim that they were some sort of pirates, but not treated like criminals, is also the legality of their acts.

The U.S. allowed about 1,700 private warships to cruise the ocean, searching for British prizes during the Revolution, when a cash-strapped Congress could not launch an efficient navy of its own at the time. These revolutionary privateers carried congressional commissions, effectively legalized pirates, which outlawed attacks on neutral ships and prisoners’ mistreatment but otherwise allowed them free rein to rob and plunder. Most privateers were motivated by greed as much as by patriotism.

However, Washington was also outfitting a fleet of lightly armed schooners, and the debate over the navy took place in Congress. Although most members thought the idea of a navy insane, the Marine Committee was formed to oversee the production of 13 frigates.

Meanwhile, with its deep-rooted culture of fishing, shipbuilding, and ocean trade, Massachusetts considered whether to unleash its citizens by allowing state-sponsored privateering. Throughout history, governments at war have used the authority under international law to authorize independent operators to transport enemy merchant cargoes. There had already been incidents off the Massachusetts coast of scavenging looting crews abandoning ship down one side as local marauders clambered up the other side wielding clubs and cutlasses; the loot from these raids had to give them visions of bigger gains to come. To legalize privateering, the government would provide the colony with an instant navy for little to no cost.

In March of 1776, Congress followed suit and ordered that all British ships be considered “fair game for civilian warships.” After months of bitter debate on the general theme of business and patriotism, Philadelphia leaders embraced trade, going so far as to provide signed preprinted applications for commissions complete with blank spaces where names of ships, captains and owners could be inserted with minimal fuss. An early proponent of privateering, John Adams, appreciated, “I was always extremely interested in it.” Privateers had to pay monetary obligations to ensure their proper conduct under regulations. Although it is only fragmentary, incomplete information, more than 1,700 Letters of Marque were granted during the American Revolution. Approximately 800 privateers were commissioned and are frequently attributed with burning, looting, and capturing around 600 British ships.

Following congressional recognition of privateering, privateers flocked from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Most had reputations for contraband, quirkiness, and eccentricity until this point. Most privateers just smuggled items throughout the Royal Navy’s blockade.

Weapons shortages resulted in delays in securing gunpowder, but some, like the Brown brothers, managed to solve the problem by converting their iron foundry to cannon-making. The Brown brothers were accused of charging ‘extortioners’ prices for guns for Congress’ frigates, giving preference to their vessels and advertising for crews with promises of quick fortunes, congenial captains, ample alcohol, and a thrilling opportunity to smite “the tyrant’s pilferers.”

Privateering was a natural fit for the brothers, and they immediately began cutting gun ports through the trade ships’ bulwarks and clearing holds to make room for more crewmen needed to sail the captured prizes home for auction. They were also named a member of the congressional committee that oversaw Congress’ frigates’ construction.

In 1777, the Ranger, an 18-gun sloop captained by a young John Paul Jones, sailed across the Atlantic with a vow “to draw off the enemy’s attention by attacking their defenseless structures,” a plan fulfilled the following spring in his daring hit-and-run raid on the British port of Whitehaven. However, Richard Grenville’s prediction that he would do infinite damage to their shipping was realized by the pirates he so loathed. While still skeptical of America’s ability to defeat them on the battlefield, the British were forced to concede one point about the rebel privateers that diplomats on the European Continent had noted in July 1776: “What is certain on the side of the Americans is their activity at sea and the ships of the Crown they are capturing.”.

In the Caribbean alone, whose position as the hub of Britain’s New World trade made it the primary hunting ground for at least a hundred New England privateers by May 1776, maritime losses reached over $2 million within a year. Royal Navy captains in the West Indies learned that a storm was approaching, but their superiors had no clue. “Time is running out,” they urged their companion, “for our journey to the English Channel.”

Before then, most American vessels carried goods such as tobacco and paper to trade for European munitions. The privateers among them were adventurous predators who might provision in French and Spanish ports but rarely sold prizes there (doing so violated those nations’ neutrality agreements with Britain), instead dispatching them back to America for appraisal and auction.

The first ship that sailed into Europe was the 16-gun Continental brig named Reprisal. Under its captain, Lambert Wickes, and carrying Benjamin Franklin to France to serve as an ambassador, the Reprisal sailed to Europe in December 1776 to join the endeavor to create an international alliance. Reprisal then set out to plunder the seas, capturing 13 merchant vessels before being chased into a French harbor by an enemy frigate.

Small privateers like Retaliation and most other ships were forced to flee before a frigate’s firepower, which could hurl a barrage of hurtling metal from up to two dozen 12-pound cannons mounted along each side. The frigate HMS Brune, for instance, destroyed a 12-gun schooner with a single broadside and significantly damaged a 9-gun schooner. In trying to treat the wounded among Volunteer’s crewmen, the boarding party found the vessel “so much damaged that we hardly had time to get them all on board before she sank.” Similarly, a Boston privateer, Speedwell, carrying 14 guns and 90 men, took a frigate’s broadside “between wind and water” (the portion of the hull usually below the waterline but exposed to the air the vessel is heeled over in the wind). The study revealed that “she was lost at sea immediately, and all her crew perished during the voyage.”

On May 17, 1777, another American captain, Gustavus Conyngham, sailed aboard Surprise with 25 men from the French port of Dunkirk and intercepted Prince of Orange, a mail steamer plying between Holland and the British port of Harwich.

In the late 1700s, British political and military leaders denounced the Revenge’s hit-and-run combat style and the many other warships now swarming European waters. For the people in Parliament, the pirates were an immoral group of terrorists to be exterminated. One report of the capture of a supply ship alleged that “rebels stripped the killed and wounded, robbed every article of clothes, bedding, and provisions belonging to the sick, burned the cutter and added every insult to the distress.” And any foe that would, “against the laws of God and Man,” fire on a vessel under a flag of truce deserved, it was declared in Parliament after one such incident, “all the horrors of rebellion,” by which was meant no mercy.

Privateers comprised two distinct ventures. A Letter of Marque permitted merchants to attack any hostile vessel they encountered along their commercial voyage. A privateer commission was issued to those who were commissioned to attack enemy merchant shipping. The primary objective was to engage a lightly armed commercial ship.

Privateers of every type of vessel were pressed into service. The largest 18th-century ship was the 600-ton, 26-gun ship Caesar out of Boston. Simultaneously, crew sizes were as little as a few men in a whaleboat and as high as 200 aboard a fully equipped privateer. Vessels designated for Privateering and Letters of Marque were launched from places up and down the east coast.

Privateers didn’t usually fly the black pirate flags; they flew a flag that looked very similar to the “Don’t tread on me flag.” Privateers that could effectively convince their opponent that the opposition was futile did the best. When that plan failed, it often resulted in extremely violent fighting with unpredictable results. Many of the pirates were captured or sank when the situation wasn’t going their way. Most did not raise the pirate flags that we know of today, but there were two basic types, Black and Red, if they did. The black was raised when you planned to raid the ship but didn’t plan on killing everyone and the Red Flag or “no quarter giving” or “the blood flag” meant they planned to kill everyone, and no mercy was to be given. It also didn’t always have to have a skull and bones. It was up to the captains what it would look like, and most pirates didn’t fly them. Those flags were used truly by pirates not necessarily by privateers.

Despite all the hardships, the crippling of British commercial shipping was highly effective, and fortunes destined to aid the founding of the new Republic were made. It is estimated that American privateers’ total economic damage was about $18 million, or about $302 million in today’s dollars during the war.

George Washington recognized early in the war that his best strategy was to “sink Britain under the disgrace and expense of war.” To survive against the formidable British military, countless small- and large-scale offensive operations needed to be conducted and maintained to keep the enemy off balance, under strain, and demoralized.

SCUBAPRO Sunday is a weekly feature focusing on maritime equipment, operations and history.

For Frogman, the battle of Tarawa marks the birth of the UDT and the start of a very long history for Naval Special Warfare. Because the Higgins boats that were taking the Marines to shore got stuck on coral reefs, the Marines would have to jump out in some case far from shore. More Marines drowned or died in the water from enemy fire then killed in the next two days of fighting. So, the Navy came up with the Underwater Demolition Teams to recon landing sights to make sure the Marines could land. 

But for the Marines, it was another day in an already long history. The Battle of Tarawa was fought on 20–23 November 1943. It took place at the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, in the Pacific Theater of WW2 and was part of Operation Galvanic, the U.S. invasion of the Gilberts. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans (forced labor by the japenese), and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio, in the extreme southwest of Tarawa Atoll. The U.S. had similar casualties in previous campaigns, like the six months of the Guadalcanal Campaign, but the losses on Tarawa happened in just 76 hours.

The Battle of Tarawa was the first American offensive in the critical central Pacific region. It was also the first time in the Pacific War that the United States had faced severe japanese opposition while conducting an amphibious landing. Previous landings met little or no initial resistance. As the Japanese strategy was to let them land and attack after they let their guard down. (but that didn’t work against the USMC). On Tarawa, the 4,500 Japanese defenders were well-supplied and well-prepared, and they fought almost to the last man, exacting a heavy toll. The Japanese said it would take the U.S. “one million men 100 years to take Tarawa.” That is saying a lot for a piece of land that was only 3 miles long and about 800m wide. The Japanese had fortified the island with about 500 pillboxes, four eight-inch gun turrets, and numerous artillery and machine-gun emplacements. A coral and log seawall ringed most of the island, and 13mm dual-purpose anti-boat/antiaircraft machine guns protected the beaches.  

On the morning of November 20, following a naval bombardment, the first wave of Marines approached Betio’s northern shore in Higgins boats. The men encountered lower tides than expected and were forced to abandon their Higgins Boats on the reef that surrounded Betio and wade hundreds of yards to shore under intense enemy fire. When the Marines reached the Red beach, they struggled to move past the sea walls and establish a secure beachhead. By the end of the day, the Marines held the extreme western tip of the island, as well as a small beachhead in the center of the northern beach. In total, it amounted to less than a quarter of a mile.

There were immediate issues from the start. The naval gunfire stopped at 0900, while the Marines in their Landing Vehicles, Tracked (LVT), were still 4,000 yards offshore. Because of the lower-than-expected tide, the Higgins boats carrying later waves would not be able to make it over the reefs in the bay. As the Marines approached the shore, they realized the naval bombardment had been rather ineffective. They started taking heavy fire from the Japanese as they made their way across the lagoon.

Assault companies, K and L, suffered over 50 percent casualties in the first two hours of the assault. The following waves were in even more trouble. Embarked in Higgins Boats, they had no choice but to unload at the reef due to the low tide. They had to wade ashore over 500 yards under heavy fire.

This was how the men of L company under Major Mike Ryan made it ashore. Rather than leading his men directly into the carnage of Red Beach 1, Ryan followed a lone Marine he had seen breach the seawall at the edge of Red Beach 1 and Green Beach, the designated landing area that comprised the western end of the island. Ryan’s landing point caught the eye of other Marines coming ashore and they headed towards Ryan’s position.

As more Marines from successive waves and other survivors worked their way to the west end of the island, Ryan took command and began to form a composite battalion from the troops he had. These men would come to be known as “Ryan’s Orphans.”

On the beach, the Marines of 3/2 continued to fight for their lives. After managing to wrangle two anti-tank guns onto the beach, they realized they were too short to fire over the seawall. As japanese tanks approached their positions, cries went up to “lift them over!” Men raced to get the guns atop the seawall just in time for the gunners to drive off the Japanese tanks. Maj. Ryan’s Orphans and others had acquired a pair of Sherman tanks. Learning as they went, the Marines coordinated assaults on pillboxes with infantry and tank fire. This gave the Marines on Betio their most significant advance of the day as Ryan’s orphans were able to advance 500 meters inland.

3rd Battalion was severely mauled in the initial assault on Betio. Surrounded by strong Japanese fortifications, the survivors on Red Beach 1 would fight for their lives for the remainder of the battle. Ryan’s orphans made a significant contribution to the battle in opening up Green Beach, so men of the 6th Marine Regiment could come ashore to reinforce the battered survivors. Now reformed, 3/2 would take part in one of the final assaults to secure the island, helping to reduce the dedicated Japanese fortification at the confluence of Red Beaches 1 and 2.

By November 23, 1943, after 76 hours of fighting, the battle for Betio was over. More than 1,000 Marines and sailors had been killed, and nearly 2,300 were wounded. Of the roughly 4,800 Japanese defenders, about 97% were thought to have been killed. Only 146 prisoners were captured.

Maj Ryan was awarded a Navy Cross. Four Marines would be awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the battle — three of them posthumously.

The military learned vital lessons from the invasion of Tarawa. The organization of amphibious landings was changed, and by D-Day, they would be far more effective. The tactics techniques and procedures of using tanks and infantry together to fight a well-intrenched enemy and other lessons learned would be used for the rest of the war. To this day, the lesson learned on Tarawa is used as the base for all amphibious operations.

www.marines.mil

SCUBAPRO Sunday is a weekly feature focusing on maritime equipment, operations and history.