Private maritime predation had an impact on the lives of numerous British merchants and seafarers during the Spanish American Wars of Independence. This was so notorious by the early 1820s that ‘traders’ ghastly wounds’ had become the subject of poems speaking of the ‘unbridled rule’ in the West Indies of murder, pillage and rape. In a letter to the Admiralty in 1822, the West Indian Association of Planters, Merchants and Ship Owners of Glasgow stated that this embroilment in the Spanish American prize war had stirred up ‘sentiments of regret and surprise’ among them because it had occurred ‘in a time of profound peace, when no risk was anticipated but that of the elements’. The dismay of the West Indian Association is easily understood, but more difficult to fathom is why merchants were surprised that commerce-raiding was having an impact on their business.

In 1815, Britain possessed almost 2.5 million tons of merchant shipping, almost half of which was deployed in transatlantic trades. Given that insurgent privateers were deployed in large numbers and cruised far and wide and that Spanish privateering and Cuban-based piracy became significant in the early 1820s, it was inevitable that they would come into contact with British merchant ships. Moreover, because insurgent and Spanish privateers were empowered with the right of search there was nothing to prevent them overhauling and boarding British vessels and detaining them in certain circumstances; indeed, Cuban-based pirates were free to prey on the vessels of all nations if they so wished.