Captain Boyle, after exhausting, as it seemed to him, the possibilities of
the West Indies for excitement and profit, took up the English channel for
his favorite cruising-ground. One of the British devices of that day for
the embarrassment of an enemy was what is called a "paper blockade." That
is to say, when it appeared that the blockading fleet had too few vessels
to make the blockade really effective by watching each port, the admiral
commanding would issue a proclamation that such and such ports were in a
state of blockade, and then withdraw his vessels from those ports; but
still claim the right to capture any neutral vessels which he might
encounter bound thither. This practise is now universally interdicted by
international law, which declares that a blockade, to be binding upon
neutrals, must be effective. But in those days England made her own
international law--for the sea, at any rate--and the paper blockade was
one of her pet weapons. Captain Boyle satirized this practise by drawing
up a formal proclamation of blockade of all the ports of Great Britain and
Ireland, and sending it to Lloyds, where it was actually posted. His
action was not wholly a jest, either, for he did blockade the port of St.
Vincent so effectively for five days that the inhabitants sent off a
pitiful appeal to Admiral Durham to send a frigate to their relief.

It was at this time, too, that the _Annual Register_ recorded as "a most
mortifying reflection" that, with a navy of more than one thousand ships
in commission, "it was not safe for a British vessel to sail without
convoy from one part of the English or Irish Channel to another."
Merchants held meetings, insurance corporations and boards of trade
memorialized the government on the subject; the shipowners and merchants
of Glasgow, in formal resolutions, called the attention of the admiralty
to the fact that "in the short space of twenty-four months above eight
hundred vessels have been captured by the power whose maritime strength we
have hitherto impolitically held in contempt." It was, indeed, a real
blockade of the British Isles that was effected by these irregular and
pigmy vessels manned by the sailors of a nation that the British had long
held in high scorn. The historian Henry Adams, without attempting to give
any complete list of captures made on the British coasts in 1814, cites
these facts:

"The 'Siren,' a schooner of less than 200 tons, with seven guns
and se