Pirates and banknotes

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Is there any records of pirates in gaop perod having get banknotes as booty? They were sligtly used then but coins were much more popular.... Just a random question about money....

[Daniel]

A good point! While coins were the most trusted money, bank notes were increasingly important as the 18th century wore on, and for the colonies, starved of coin by the Navigation Acts, bank notes and suchlike negotiable instruments were particularly important, as well as pieces of eight and other foreign coins.

While I don't know of any specific cases where pirates stole banknotes, in my Commercial Paper class last year we talked about the 1758 case of Miller v. Race, which dealt with a thief stealing a note. When a thief steals a note and uses it as money to pay a debt, the person who receives it is a "holder in due course" and has a legal right to possession of the note and to demand payment from the note's drawer (i.e. the person who wrote the note). Thus, a pirate or any other thief who steals a bank note, or any other negotiable instrument, has an excellent chance of spending it, because the seller who takes the note has no obligation to check how the buyer came into possession of the note. This was essential to ensure that notes could circulate freely as money; if merchants always had to check everybody's title to a note, sometimes back through a dozen or a hundred people between himself and the original drawer, nobody would ever have accepted notes in place of coin.

By the way, Miller v. Race was written by good old Lord Mansfield again.

[RIPP Tar]

Is there any examples of these notes? Images or terminology used in the note?