insulted, or perhaps impressed in British privateers. The ships
were lost to their owners. There was no appeal and no redress. At
Martinique an English fleet and army captured St. Pierre in
February, 1794. Files of marines boarded every American ship in
the harbor, tore down the colors, and flung two hundred and fifty
seamen into the foul holds of a prison hulk. There they were
kept, half-dead with thirst and hunger while their vessels,
uncared for, had stranded or sunk at their moorings. Scores of
outrages as abominable as this were on record in the office of
the Secretary of State. Shipmasters were afraid to sail to the
southward and, for lack of these markets for dried cod, the
fishing schooners of Marblehead were idle.

For a time a second war with England seemed imminent. An alarmed
Congress passed laws to create a navy and to fortify the most
important American harbors. President Washington recommended an
embargo of thirty days, which Congress promptly voted and then
extended for thirty more. It was a popular measure and strictly
enforced by the mariners themselves. The mates and captains of
the brigs and snows in the Delaware River met and resolved not to
go to sea for another ten days, swearing to lie idle sooner than
feed the British robbers in the West Indies. It was in the midst
of these demonstrations that Washington seized the one hope of
peace and recommended a special mission to England.

The treaty negotiated by John Jay in 1794 was received with an
outburst of popular indignation. Jay was damned as a traitor,
while the sailors of Portsmouth burned him in effigy. By way of
an answer to the terms of the obnoxious treaty, a seafaring mob
in Boston raided and burned the British privateer Speedwell,