The Rover (privateering ship)

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The Rover was a privateer brig out of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. She was built in Brooklyn in from 1799-1800. The Rover was 100 tons and carried fourteen 4 pound cannon.

Owned by a group of merchants from Liverpool, Nova Scotia, "The Rover" was commanded by Alexander Godfrey under a British letter of marque. The Rover won fame with several bold engagements, including a single handed attack on a French convoy but she is most famous for a battle off the coast of South American with the Spanish naval schooner, Santa Rita, and three accompanying gunboats. Off the coast of Venezuela in 1800, The Rover captured Santa Rita of ten 6 pounders with two carronades and two gunboats, totaling a crew of 125. The Rover did not lose a single man of its crew of 55. The capture made Godfrey a hero in British naval circles. He was celebrated in the British Naval Chronicle and offered a commission in the Royal Navy but declined.

Later cruises by "The Rover" were less successful. A subsequent captain, Benjamin Collins, lost his letter of marque and created trouble for The Rover's owners with the illegal capture of several merchants. After 1803, she was sold to Halifax owners and later capsized and sank in the West Indies.

[edit] References

  • Raddall, Thomas H. (1958). The Rover: The Story of a Canadian Privateer. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
  • Conlin, Daniel. "A Private War in the Carribean: Nova Scotian Privateering 1793-1805, The Northern Mariner, Vol. VI, No. 4, p. 29-48.

[edit] External links

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