Wiktionary
n. (context historical English) A naval vessel, tasked with disrupting enemy merchant shipping.
Usage examples of "commerce raider".
Where a Peep commerce raider might be willing to accept the risk of encountering a Q-ship in order to simply destroy Manticoran shipping, a pirate would be looking to capture his victims and would be unlikely to hazard his ship against a merchant cruiser unless he anticipated a particularly luscious prize.
Intelligent, canny as a fox, John Newland Maffitt was second only to Raphael Semmes of the Alabama as a commerce raider, and was the most successful blockade runner of them all.
Any commerce raider knew that the best chance to hit a merchantman (or a convoy of them) was immediately after it translated from hyper- to normal-space, before its sensors had time to locate potential threats and while its velocity was at its lowest.
And when a Confederate commerce raider captured him and sank his boat, his skipper back then hadn't been able to yell for help.
When we're cruising we stand out like a sore thumb and there's not much our popguns could do against a commerce raider or a good pirate ship.
A commerce raider of theirs may decide the King of Den-mark and his bishops are too far off to be a threat.