. . . The mutiny at the Nore brought the people face to face with
the appalling risks attendant on wholesale pressing while the war
with America, incurred for the sole purpose of upholding the
right to press, taught them the lengths to which their rulers
were still prepared to go in order to enslave them."*

* The Press Gang Afloat and Ashore, by J. R. Hutchinson.



CHAPTER VII. THE BRILLIANT ERA OF 1812

American privateering in 1812 was even bolder and more successful
than during the Revolution. It was the work of a race of merchant
seamen who had found themselves, who were in the forefront of the
world's trade and commerce, and who were equipped to challenge
the enemy's pretensions to supremacy afloat. Once more there was
a mere shadow of a navy to protect them, but they had learned to
trust their own resources. They would send to sea fewer of the
small craft, slow and poorly armed, and likely to meet disaster.
They were capable of manning what was, in fact, a private navy
comprised of fast and formidable cruisers. The intervening
generation had advanced the art of building and handling ships
beyond all rivalry, and England grudgingly acknowledged their
ability. The year of 1812 was indeed but a little distance from
the resplendent modern era of the Atlantic packet and the Cape
Horn clipper.

Already these Yankee deep-water ships could be recognized afar by
their lofty spars and snowy clouds of cotton duck beneath which