Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution

To be featured in a Mount Vernon Book Talk and Lecture Series on May 24th, 2023. Click here for event details.   Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution by Eric Jay Dolin – Hardcover – Copyright 2022 – ISBN 978-1631498251. The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. 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 ne