The Confederate Privateers

"The Confederate Privateers, a book of action and adventure, recounts the exploits of the Confederacy's privately armed ships and their sea battles with the Union. Called "pirates" by Northerners, Southerners preferred to call them "gentlemen adventurers," justly boasting of their exploits. Using naval war records and other archives, William Robinson offers readers an authentic description of the privateers, their cruises and prizes, their successes and failures, and their ultimate fates. In fact, this narrative history is the first to describe privateer Confederate cruises of the Jefferson Davis, the Dixie, the Sally, and the pygmy submarine Pioneer. A Southerner himself, Robinson tells the story from the Confederate point of view, as a sovereign state waging legitimate war in self-defense. Robinson's treatment portrays the ambitions of the South's volunteer mariners as they pursued the Confederate cause on the nation's waterways."--Back cover.