Otway Burns (c. 1775 – August 25, 1850) was an American privateer during the War of 1812 and later, a North Carolina State Senator. Early life Burns was born at Queen's Creek, near Swansboro, North Carolina. He became a seaman after learning the trade at the ports in Swansboro and Beaufort, a nearby town situated in Carteret County. After acquiring the skills needed to become a merchant captain, Burns sailed along the East Coast of the United States, all the way north up to Maine. After his voyage, he married his cousin, Joanna Grant, on July 6, 1809. The next year, the couple moved to Swansboro. There, Joanna gave birth to Owen, the couple's only child. Burns received financial support for his trading activities from Edward Pasteur, a physician and local political leader from New Bern. In the summer of 1812, just a month after the War of 1812 had commenced, Burns and Pasteur purchased a vessel in New York City for eight thousand US dollars, which Burns intended to use for privateering along the coast of The Carolinas. The 147-ton vessel, named Zephyr, had been constructed four years earlier on the West River in Maryland. Zephyr measured from bow (ship) to stern, had a beam of and a depth of almost . The vessel was armed with one pivot gun and between five and seven gun carriages. Also on board were a number of small arms: cutlasses, pistols, muskets, boarding pikes, pickaxes and blunderbusses. After rechristening the vessel as Snap Dragon, Burns and Pasteur obtained official letters of marque for the vessel in New York on August 27, 1812. After sailing back to New Bern, the men sold their 50 shares in the ship at a price of US$260 per share to eight other investors from New Bern, Tarboro and Edenton. Privateering career Pasteur and Burns, on Snap Dragon, headed to New Bern to recruit men to join the vessel's crew. To their surprise, some of New Bern's political leaders treated privateering like piracy, and they tried to complicate matters for the two privateers. The leaders convinced new recruits to borrow money, upon which, they would be arrested for their debt. Burns twice retaliated against the politicians. In one incident, the crew of Snap Dragon sank a boat with constables who were planning on boarding the ship. Subsequently, a local attorney labeled the vessel as a "licensed robber". Burns