all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to the right and left to
make every ship that was running in heave to or wait until we had
leisure to send a boat on board to see, in our lingo, what she
was made of. I have frequently known a dozen and sometimes a
couple of dozen ships lying a league or two off the port, losing
their fair wind, their tide, and worse than all, their market for
many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our search was
completed."

The right of a belligerent to search neutral vessels for
contraband of war or evidence of a forbidden destination was not
the issue at stake. This was a usage sanctioned by such
international law as then existed. It was the alleged right to
search for English seamen in neutral vessels that Great Britain
exercised, not only on the high seas but even in territorial
waters, which the American Government refused to recognize. In
vain the Government had endeavored to protect its sailors from
impressment by means of certificates of birth and citizenship.
These documents were jeered at by the English naval lieutenant
and his boarding gang, who kidnapped from the forecastle such
stalwart tars as pleased their fancy. The victim who sought to
inform an American consul of his plight was lashed to the rigging
and flogged by a boatswain's mate. The files of the State
Department, in 1807, had contained the names of six thousand
American sailors who were as much slaves and prisoners aboard
British men-of-war as if they had been made captives by the Dey
of Algiers. One of these incidents, occurring on the ship Betsy,
Captain Nathaniel Silsbee, while at Madras in 1795, will serve to
show how this brutal business was done.