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Updated: June 5, 2025
With these weapons, it would have been easy for us to have given the privateersmen such a hint, as would not fail to keep them at bay. Then I always had my pistols, which were not only valuable implements, but were double-barrelled and well loaded. Our only ground of alarm, therefore, came from the Englishman.
Nevertheless, the number of captures must have continued great for some years; for, as is shown by the foregoing figures, the spoils were sufficiently attractive to cause a steady increase in the number of privateers until the last year of the war. There followed dull times for the privateersmen.
The great pivot-gun was accordingly pointed down the main hatch, and two heavy shots sent crashing through the bottom. Then applying the torch, to make certain the work of destruction, the privateersmen left the ship, giving three cheers for the gallant "Gen. Armstrong," as a burst of flame and a roar told that the flames had reached her magazine. This gallant action won loud plaudits for Capt.
He received me with much cordiality, and also introduced me to his guests; but I could see that my presence was deemed an intrusion by most of them, the naval men especially, who were not only jealous of privateersmen, but were also very much inclined to look down upon us as inferior beings to themselves.
In those days other nations, following the example of France and England, trampled on the great principles of international law so far as our insulted country was concerned. As the privateersmen could not take our vessel without avowing themselves pirates, they reluctantly limited themselves to plunder.
These prison ships were intended for sailors and seaman taken on the ocean, mostly the crews of privateersmen, but some soldiers were also sent to languish in their holds. "The first vessels used were transports in which cattle and other stores had been brought over by the British in 1776.
Several Northern seaports shared with Baltimore the business of fitting out and manning privateers. The hardy seamen of Maine and Massachusetts were ever ready for a profitable venture of this kind; and, as the continuation of the war caused the whale-fishery to languish, the sailors gladly took up the adventurous life of privateersmen.
It was then that Salem played that conspicuous part which was, for a generation, to overshadow the activities of all other American seaports. Six thousand privateersmen had signed articles in her taverns, as many as the total population of the town, and they filled it with a spirit of enterprise and daring.
When the wars of the early years of the nineteenth century ended the privateersmen looked about for some seafaring enterprise which promised profit. A few became pirates, more went into the slave-trade. Men of this type were not merely willing to risk their lives in a criminal calling, but were quite as ready to fight for their property as to try to save it by flight.
He seemed to be a mere boy, but of the mettle which made American officers and privateersmen of his days the only guerdons of the republicanism of the seas against the else universal dominion of England. This portrait, the last of her family possessions, was the young sailor's parting gift to her when he sailed in the Ida, leaving her a mere girl, with his son upon her breast.
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