Sailing from New Brunswick ports, pirates and privateers scourged the Atlantic coast throughout the 19th century. Legitimized with letters of marque and reprisal, they fought a private war against the King's enemies â the Americans. The final act in this enterprise came during the Civil War, when a gang of Saint John ne'er-do-wells captured a passenger steamer, the SS Chesapeake, on behalf of the Confederacy.

Amid tales of battles at sea and fortunes lost and won, Faye Kert's exposure of the murky context in which these semi-legal marauders operated reveals surprising truths about Confederation and its promoters.