f the two preceding twelvemonths would have
produced decided opinions and practical results in the construction of
privateers, as well as in the direction given them. It is one thing to
take what is at hand and make the most of it in an emergency; it is
another to design thoughtfully a new instrument, best qualified for
the end in view. The cruiser needed speed and handiness,--that is the
first and obvious requirement; but, to escape the numerous enemies
gradually let loose to shorten her career, it became increasingly
requisite that she should have also weight of armament, to fight, and
weight of hull--tonnage--to hold her way in rough and head seas. These
qualities were not irreconcilable; but, to effect the necessary
combination, additional size was inevitable.

Accordingly, recognition of these facts is found in the laying down of
privateers for the particular business. Niles' Register, a Baltimore
weekly, notes with local pride that, although the port itself is
bolted and barred by the blockade of the Chesapeake, the Baltimore
model for schooners is in demand from Maine to Georgia; that they are
being built, often with Baltimore capital, in many places from which
escape is always possible. In Boston, there are in construction three
stout hulls, pierced for twenty-two guns; clearly much heavier in
tonnage, as in armament, than the schooner rate, and bearing the
linked names of "Blakely," "Reindeer," and "Avon." Mention is made of
one vessel of twenty-two long, heavy guns, which has already sailed,
and of two others, to carry as many as thirty to thirty-six, nearly
ready.[261]

Between the divergent requirements of size and numbers, there is
always a middle term; a mean, not capable of exact definition, but
still existent within certain not very widely separated extremes. For
commerce destroying by individual cruisers, acting separately, which
was the measure that commended itself to the men of 1812, vessels
approaching the tonnage of the national sloops of war seemed, by their
successes and their immunity from capture, to realize very nearly the
best conditions of advantage. The national brigs which put to sea were
all captured, save one; and she was so notoriously dull of sailing
that her escape was attributed to mere good luck, experienced on
several critical occasions. Nearly all the sloops escaped; while the
three frigates lost, the "Chesapeake," "Essex," and "President," were
taken under circumstances that of