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Commerce raiding (french: guerre de course, "war of the chase"; german: Handelskrieg, "trade war") is a form of
naval warfare Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace involving a major body of water such as a large lake or wide river. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years. Even in the interior of large la ...
used to destroy or disrupt logistics of the enemy on the open sea by attacking its merchant shipping, rather than engaging its
combatants Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...
or enforcing a
blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are leg ...
against them.


Privateering

The first sort of commerce raiding was for nations to commission
privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
s. Early instances of this type of warfare were by the English and Dutch against the Spanish treasure fleets of the 16th century, which resulted in financial gain for both captain and crew upon capture of enemy vessels ("
prizes A prize is an award to be given to a person or a group of people (such as sporting teams and organizations) to recognize and reward their actions and achievements.
").


17th and 18th centuries

Privateers A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
formed a large part of the total military force at sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the First Anglo-Dutch War, English privateers attacked the trade on which the United Provinces entirely depended, capturing over 1,000 Dutch merchant ships. During the subsequent war with Spain, Spanish and Flemish privateers in the service of the Spanish Crown, including the notorious
Dunkirkers During the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), the Dunkirkers or Dunkirk Privateers were commerce raiders in the service of the Spanish monarchy. They were also part of the ''Dunkirk fleet'', which consequently was a part of the Spanish monarchy's ''Fl ...
, captured 1,500 English
merchant ship A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are ...
s, which provided a major boost to the flagging Dutch trade. Dutch privateers and others also attacked English trade, whether coastal, Atlantic, or Mediterranean, in the Second and Third
Anglo-Dutch wars The Anglo–Dutch Wars ( nl, Engels–Nederlandse Oorlogen) were a series of conflicts mainly fought between the Dutch Republic and England (later Great Britain) from mid-17th to late 18th century. The first three wars occurred in the second ...
. During the
Nine Years' War The Nine Years' War (1688–1697), often called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg, was a conflict between Kingdom of France, France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by t ...
, French policy strongly encouraged privateers, including the famous Jean Bart, to attack English and Dutch shipping. England lost roughly 4,000 merchant ships during the war.Privateering and the Private Production of Naval Power
by Gary M. Anderson and Adam Gifford Jr.
In the following War of Spanish Succession, privateer attacks continued, Britain losing 3,250 merchant ships. Parliament passed an updated Cruisers and Convoys Act in 1708, allocating regular warships to the defence of trade. In the War of Austrian Succession, the Royal Navy was able to concentrate more on defending British ships. Britain lost 3,238 merchantmen, a smaller fraction of her merchant marine than the enemy losses of 3,434. While French losses were proportionally severe, the smaller but better-protected Spanish trade suffered the least, and Spanish privateers enjoyed much of the best plunder of enemy merchantmen, particularly in the West Indies.


Napoleonic Wars

During Britain's wars against
Revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective, to refer to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor. ...
and
Napoleonic France The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire (; Latin: ) after 1809, also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental ...
, the
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
dominated the seas. France adopted a ''guerre de course'' strategy by licensing civilian
privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
s to seize British shipping. British
East Indiamen East Indiaman was a general name for any sailing ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India trading companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vesse ...
of the time were therefore heavily armed to protect themselves against such raids, at the cost of considerable speed and maneuverability. Some East Indiamen, such as , were successfully able to fend off these attacks in other parts of the world; others, such as when ''Kent'' met ''Confiance'' in 1800, were less fortunate. U.S. and British privateers also actively raided each other's shipping during the
War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It be ...
.


American Civil War

During the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
, the Confederate Navy operated a fleet of commissioned Confederate States Navy commerce raiders. These differed from
privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
s as they were state-owned ships with orders to destroy enemy commerce rather than privately owned ships with letters of marque. These included ''Sumter'', ''Florida'', ''Alabama'', and ''Shenandoah''. Most of the ships used in this period were built in Britain, which resulted in the ''Alabama'' Claims.


Steel navies

By the 1880s, the navies of Europe began to deploy warships made of iron and steel. The natural evolution that followed was the installation of more powerful guns to penetrate such warships, followed by specialized armor plating, followed by larger guns and the development of effective torpedoes (followed by armored belts below the waterline to protect against them). This "arms spiral" (which included the development of
high explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An ...
and
armor-piercing Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many warsh ...
shells) shifted focus from capture of "prizes" (that meant financial gain for captain and crew of the responsible vessel, and their government, when the prize and her cargo were
auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition e ...
ed) to destruction of enemy
warships A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are usually faster an ...
. First seen at the
Sinope Sinope may refer to: *Sinop, Turkey, a city on the Black Sea, historically known as Sinope ** Battle of Sinop, 1853 naval battle in the Sinop port *Sinop Province * Sinope, Leicestershire, a hamlet in the Midlands of England *Sinope (mythology), in ...
in 1853, the change was little appreciated until 1905, when at Tsushima seven pre-dreadnoughts were sent to the bottom, and the only prizes were those that had voluntarily surrendered.


World War I

World War I saw Germany conducting a commerce war ("''Handelskrieg''") against Britain and her allies, principally with U-boats, but also with merchant raiders and
light cruiser A light cruiser is a type of small or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck. Prior to th ...
s, and even occasionally with naval airships.


World War II

During World War II, the
Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allies of World War II, ...
saw
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
conducting commerce raiding against Britain and its allies, again using U-boats,
auxiliary cruisers An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in lo ...
, and small groups of cruisers and battleships (surface raiders). The goal was to wage a
tonnage war A tonnage war is a military strategy aimed at merchant shipping. The premise is that the enemy has a finite number of ships and a finite capacity to build replacements. The concept was made famous by German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who wrote:" ...
against the British Empire, destroying merchant shipping (and its cargoes) faster than they could be replaced, ultimately strangling the island nation by cutting off supplies it was inevitably dependent upon. Limitations set by the
Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1 ...
meant Germany had been unable to build a large battle fleet between the World Wars as she had in the time leading up to the World War I; instead, she chose to covertly develop her U-boat fleet.
Submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s were cheaper and quicker to build than capital ships. This meant Germany was not able to fight battles between fleets, and relied on commerce raiding instead. The extreme early success of
Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official branches, along with the a ...
U-boat wolfpacks led to the Allied development of an extensive and naval resource-straining convoy system. In addition to U-boats Germany also deployed the small numbers of surface warships she possessed, such as the "
pocket battleship The ''Deutschland'' class was a series of three ''Panzerschiffe'' (armored ships), a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the ''Reichsmarine'' officially in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The ships of the cl ...
s", her auxiliary cruisers, and a number of commercial vessels converted into
merchant raiders Merchant raiders are armed commerce raiding ships that disguise themselves as non-combatant merchant vessels. History Germany used several merchant raiders early in World War I (1914–1918), and again early in World War II (1939–1945). The ...
, perhaps the most famous being . During World War II, elements of the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
based in Brazil conducted operations in the Atlantic against German commerce raiders and
blockade runner A blockade runner is a merchant vessel used for evading a naval blockade of a port or strait. It is usually light and fast, using stealth and speed rather than confronting the blockaders in order to break the blockade. Blockade runners usua ...
s. In the Pacific, the U.S. Navy operated against Japanese merchant shipping, as well as engaging in offensive operations against ships of the Japanese Imperial Navy. The bulk of the Japanese merchant marine was sunk by American submarines. By the end of the war, only 12% of Japan's pre-war merchant tonnage was still afloat. The Indian Ocean raid was a naval sortie by the
Carrier Striking Task Force The , also known as the ''Kidō Butai'' ("Mobile Force"), was a name used for a combined carrier battle group comprising most of the aircraft carriers and carrier air groups of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the first eight months of the P ...
of the
Japanese Navy , abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ...
from 31 March to 10 April 1942 against Allied shipping and bases in the
Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...
. It was an early engagement of the Pacific campaign of World War II. The staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy decided to send some raiders to
Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...
waters during December 12, 1941 – July 12, 1942. The Germans had already been operating in the area and conducted mutual aid with Japanese submarines, in the form of re-supply and military intelligence. The Indian Ocean was the largest operating area involving direct contact between the two Axis partners, in which their primary objective was to keep pressure on the shipping lanes. The Japanese Navy participated in some commerce raiding, but concentrated its efforts toward a "decisive battle" in the Pacific, which never took place.


See also

* Axis naval activity in Australian waters *
Demoralization (warfare) Demoralization is, in a context of warfare, national security, and law enforcement, a process in psychological warfare with the objective to erode morale among enemy combatants and/or noncombatants. That can encourage them to retreat, surrend ...
* German auxiliary cruiser ''Atlantis'' * Indian Ocean raid *
Japanese raiders in Indian Ocean Campaign The Japanese raiders in the Indian Ocean were those vessels used by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the Second World War to pursue its war on Allied commerce in that theatre. Possessing a powerful fleet of warships, prior to the start of ...
* Merchant raider *
Naval strategy Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of war at sea, the naval equivalent of military strategy on land. Naval strategy, and the related concept of maritime strategy, concerns the overall strategy for achieving victory at sea, including th ...
*
Piracy Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
*
Privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
*
Q-ship Q-ships, also known as Q-boats, decoy vessels, special service ships, or mystery ships, were heavily armed merchant ships with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. This gave Q-ships the chance to open f ...
*
Tonnage war A tonnage war is a military strategy aimed at merchant shipping. The premise is that the enemy has a finite number of ships and a finite capacity to build replacements. The concept was made famous by German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who wrote:" ...
*
Unrestricted submarine warfare Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink merchant ships such as freighters and tankers without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules (also known as "cruiser rules") that call for warships to s ...


Notes


References

* * Lehmann, Ernst A.; Mingos, Howard. ''The Zeppelins: The Development of the Airship, with the Story of the Zepplin Air Raids in the World War''. *


Further reading

* Brown, David. ''Warship Losses Of World War II''. 1995. . * Blair, Clay, Jr. ''Silent Victory''. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975. * Mahan, Alfred, Captain. ''Influence of Seapower on History''. * Reeman, Douglas. ''The Last Raider''. Arrow Books. . Novel detailing the last voyage of a WWI German commerce raider
Chapter VI: "THE NORTH SEA PATROL—THE ZEPPELINS AT JUTLAND"
online chapter). {{DEFAULTSORT:Commerce Raiding Economic warfare Naval warfare Naval warfare tactics