Confiance in 1800, were less fortunate. U.S. and British privateers also actively raided each other's shipping during the War of 1812. American Civil War During the American Civil War, the Confederate Navy operated a fleet of commissioned Confederate States Navy commerce raiders. These differed from privateers as they were state-owned ships with orders to destroy enemy commerce rather than privately owned ships with letters of marque. These included Sumter, Florida, Alabama, and Shenandoah. Most of the ships used in this period were built in Britain, which resulted in the Alabama Claims. Steel navies By the 1880s, the navies of Europe began to deploy warships made of iron and steel. The natural evolution that followed was the installation of more powerful guns to penetrate such warships, followed by specialized armor plating, followed by larger guns and the development of effective torpedoes (followed by armored belts below the waterline to protect against them). This "arms spiral" (which included the development of high explosive and armor-piercing shells) shifted focus from capture of "prizes" (that meant financial gain for captain and crew of the responsible vessel, and their government, when the prize and her cargo were auctioned) to destruction of enemy warships. First seen at the Sinope in 1853, the change was little appreciated until 1905, when at Tsushima seven pre-dreadnoughts were sent to the bottom, and the only prizes were those that had voluntarily surrendered. World War I World War I saw Germany conducting a commerce war ("Handelskrieg") against Britain and her allies, principally with U-boats, but also with merchant raiders and light cruisers, and even occasionally with naval airships. World War II During World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic saw Nazi Germany conducting commerce raiding against Britain and its allies, again using U-boats, auxiliary cruisers, and small groups of cruisers and battleships (surface raiders). The goal was to wage a tonnage war against the British Empire, destroying merchant shipping (and its cargoes) faster than they could be replaced, ultimately strangling the island nation by cutting off supplies it was inevitably dependent upon. Limitations set by the Treaty of Versailles meant Germany had been unable to build a large battle fleet between the World Wars as she had in the time leading up to the World War I; instead, she chose to covertly develop her U-boat fleet. Submarines were cheaper and quicker to build than capital ships. This meant Germany was