Congress approved participation in none of the international agreements that renounce privateering until 1961, when it did so by implication in ratifying the U.N. 3 Despite allowing this power to lie dormant, the U.S.

The War of 1812 was the last time the United States commissioned privateers.

2 The United States refused to relinquish privateering by acceding to either the Declaration of Paris or the Hague convention on the conversion of merchant ships into warships. Article 8 of the Convention on the High Seas defines a warship as “a ship belonging to the naval forces of a State and bearing the external marks distinguishing warships of its nationality, under the command of an officer duly commissioned by the government and whose name appears in the Navy List, and manned by a crew who are under regular naval discipline.” This is the definition the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907 used in its seventh convention, on the conversion of merchant ships into warships, the intent of which was to reaffirm the abolition of privateering of the Declaration of Paris of 1856. 1 Unremarked at the time, the United States thereby reversed what had been a guiding principle of American foreign policy since the 1790s. Kennedy lodged with the secretary general of the United Nations the 1958 United Nations Convention on the High Seas, which the Senate had ratified.

World of warships make stats private