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A corsair is a member of the crew of a corsair ship, an armed civilian ship, generally merchant, authorized by a letter of race (or letter of marque) to attack any ship flying the flag of enemy States, and particularly its merchant traffic. .
This form of naval warfare is called racing warfare.
Race War
Privateering has often been used by a belligerent to make up for the insufficiency of its resources against an adversary with naval supremacy.
This was the strategy of the French against the English for much of the 18th century and during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire.
Similarly, during the two world wars, the German navy fitted out merchant ships for the war on Allied commerce in secondary theaters where the traffic was not organized in convoys (Indian Ocean, Pacific, South Atlantic). The adventures of these corsairs will generally be picturesque but without much consequence on the course of the two conflicts
Corsairs, wrongly confused with pirates, are in a way mercenary sailors. As such, they used generally small, fast, maneuverable, and stealthy ships to execute boarding at sea more by surprise than by force. When "fortune" smiled on them, they could take off boats of high tonnage (the emblematic capture of Kent by the flute La Confiance of Robert Surcouf on August 31, 1800) but often merchants, not conducive to their activity and which they resold often.