Confederate Privateers (Classics in Maritime History)

the long version

"The Confederate privateers is a book of action and adventure filled with stories of the Confederacy's privately armed ships and their sea battles with the Union. Called 'pirates' by the North, the South preferred to call them 'gentlemen adventurers', justly boasting of their exploits. Using naval war records and other archives, the author provides readers with an authentic description of the privateers, their cruises and prizes, their successes and failures, and their ultimate fates. In fact, this is the first narrative history of privateer cruises aboard the Jefferson Davis, the Dixie, the Sally, and the pygmy submarine Pioneer. Being a Southerner himself, Robinson tells the story from the Confederate point of view, as a sovereign state waging legitimate war in self-defense. This treatment, as no other could, gives a picture of the feelings and purposes with which the volunteer mariners of Dixie put out upon their enterprises"--Page 4 of cover.