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.

Illustrated t.p. "Appendix: Procedure in the Confederate prize courts": p. 345-353.

How the Confederacy launched privateering upon the seas -- The response to the lure of sea roving -- Privateering begins in New Orleans -- The brief and ill-fated cruise of the Savannah -- The jolly cruise of the Jefferson Davis -- The melancholy fate of two prizes -- The jaunty little Dixie -- In the Court of Admiralty of the Confederate States of America for South Carolina District -- The rendezvous at Hatteras -- The successful career of the Sallie -- The Petrel, the Beauregard, and the Rattlesnake, privateers which unluckily measured arms with men-of-war -- The trial of the "pirates" -- At the head of the passes -- The world's only submarine privateer -- The dramatic capture of the St. Nicholas -- Some reprisals without letters -- Certain adventures more or less private -- John Y. Beall, partisan sea-captain -- Letters of marquee stillborn -- How some privateers changed their mission -- Privateering in the Pacific -- The case of Captain Greathouse and the schooner J.M. Chapman -- The privateer Retribution and the career of the adventurous Mr. Braine -- The United States dabbles in privateering -- The Confederacy begins the modification of privateering.