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In February, 1916, Representative McLemore introduced a resolution requesting the President to warn American citizens to refrain from traveling on armed belligerent vessels, whether merchantmen or otherwise and to state that if they persisted they would do so at their own peril. The House, according to the Speaker, was prepared to pass the resolution.
From Carolina he cruised on the coast of Virginia, where he took and plundered several merchantmen, and forced several men, and then returned to the coast of Carolina, where he did abundance of mischief.
Admiral Boudaen in 1755 contented himself with the protection of the merchantmen, but Wassenaer in 1756 and 1757 was more aggressive and compelled the Dey of Algiers to make terms. Meanwhile the rivalry between France and England on the one hand, and between Austria and Prussia on the other, led to the formation of new alliances, and placed the Dutch Republic in a difficult position.
He learnt it as a lad, when he saw his neighbours Hawkins and Drake changed by Spanish tyranny and treachery from peaceful merchantmen into fierce scourges of God. He learnt it scholastically, from fathers and divines, as an Oxford scholar, in days when Oxford was a Protestant indeed, in whom there was no guile.
Yet that general, on his return, was not less well received by the King. At sea we had successes. Frobin, with vessels more feeble than the four English ones of seventy guns, which convoyed a fleet of eighteen ships loaded with provisions and articles of war, took two of those vessels of war and the eighteen merchantmen, after four hours' fighting, and set fire to one of the two others.
Should the whole army mutiny at once, what might become of the kingdom of Spain? The Dutch cruisers watched so carefully on the track of the homeward-bound argosies, that the traffic was becoming more dangerous than lucrative, particularly since the public law established by Admiral Fazardo, that it was competent for naval commanders to hang, drown, or burn the crews of the enemy's merchantmen.
Broadside after broadside was fired by both vessels soon afterwards, and the President at last bore off. Each party lost about twenty-two men, but the British frigate had the advantage. Her guns were pointed with great skill, and produced a surprising effect, as the American squadron failed in taking the single English frigate, and the whole merchantmen escaped untouched.
And when a few French privateers came also upon the scene, they helped to make the business of legitimate capture of merchantmen, during the time of war, a very complicated affair.
So it seemed to us, as we ran out past the magnificent harbour at the back of Virgin Gorda, where, in the old war times, the merchantmen of all the West Indies used to collect, to be conveyed homeward by the naval squadron, and across a shallow sea white with coral beds.
Many of the merchantmen, whose cargoes were consigned to merchants and traders on the Rock, carried them back to England; as the merchants, having no place, whatever, in which to store goods for the town was now almost entirely destroyed refused to accept them.
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