[Contemporary Docs] "Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents"
Also interesting is the clearly visible shift away from privateering (popular via commissions in the early and mid-seventeenth century) towards the state pursuit of pirates in the late-seventeenth and early to mid-eighteenth centuries).
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​http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24882/24882-h/24882-h.htm
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