Born in 1773, the corsair Robert Surcouf became famous as the Tiger of the Seas.
Being a corsair was a respectable occupation for a gentleman – rather like taking a commission in the armed forces – and cost the government nothing as the corsair provided his own ships. Robert’s grandfather had held a licence from Louis Fourteenth allowing him to attack enemy merchant shipping; Robert and his elder brother continued the family tradition in the reign of Louis Sixteenth, then worked for the Republic, then for Napoléon.
The usual target of the French corsairs were English merchantmen, since England and France were usually at war and the far-flung English colonies resulted in plenty of merchant shipping to attack. Surcouf captured English vessels in the Indian Ocean as well as around the southern and western coasts of France. He used fast but tiny vessels with six guns and a dozen crew to take over ships ten times their size, and unlike the U-boats of World War II he made a personal fortune by selling the ships and their contents in the nearest port before heading to sea again.
The number of French corsairs probably explains the poor performance of the legitimate French Navy, deprived of strategic thinkers and so no match for Horatio Nelson. When Napoléon offered Surcouf a captaincy in the navy, he is reputed to have refused saying, “If I’d wanted to command one of your ships, sire, I’d have taken it already.”
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