Oyster pirate

In the context of Jack London's life, it refers to a specific set of conditions peculiar to the oyster industry in San Francisco Bay in the 1880s.

[4] Their harvest of a private commodity from a public space, the San Francisco Bay, led to an opportunity for oyster pirates.

[5] Jack London described oyster piracy in his autobiographical "alcoholic memoirs", John Barleycorn, in the form of romanticized juvenile fiction in The Cruise of the Dazzler, and from the opposing point of view of the California Fish Patrol in "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates," from Tales of the Fish Patrol.

[citation needed] London owned a boat which he used as an oyster pirate, whose purchase was funded by a loan from his black nanny Virginia Prentiss.

These disputes often focused on increased privatization of what had been public rights, providing an obvious inspiration for later West Coast activities.