ns were sufficiently
burdensome, however, to make the ship-owners and sailors of 1770 among
those most ready and eager for the revolt against the king.

The close of the Revolution found American shipping in a reasonably
prosperous condition. It is true that the peaceful vocation of the seamen
had been interrupted, all access to British ports denied them, and their
voyages to Continental markets had for six years been attended by the
ever-present risk of capture and condemnation. But on the other hand, the
war had opened the way for privateering, and out of the ports of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut the privateers swarmed like
swallows from a chimney at dawn. To the adventurous and not
over-scrupulous men who followed it, privateering was a congenial
pursuit--so much so, unhappily, that when the war ended, and a treaty
robbed their calling of its guise of lawfulness, too many of them still
continued it, braving the penalties of piracy for the sake of its gains.
But during the period of the Revolution privateering did the struggling
young nation two services--it sorely harassed the enemy, and it kept alive
the seafaring zeal and skill of the New Englanders.

For a time it seemed that not all this zeal and skill could replace the
maritime interests where they were when the Revolution began. For most
people in the colonies independence meant a broader scope of activity--to
the shipowner and sailor it meant new and serious limitations. England was
still engaged in the effort to monopolize ocean traffic by the operation
of tariffs and navigation laws. New England having become a foreign
nation, her ships were denied admittance to the ports of the British West
Indies, with which for years a nourishing trade had been conducted.
Lumber, corn, fish, live stock, and farm produce had been sent to the
islands, and coffee, sugar, cotton, rum, and indigo brought back. This
commerce, which had come to equal L3,500,000 a year, was shut off by the
British after American independence, despite the protest of Pitt, who saw
clearly that the West Indians would suffer even more than the Americans.
Time showed his wisdom. Terrible sufferings came upon the West Indies for
lack of the supplies they had been accustomed to import, and between 1780
and 1787 as many as 15,000 slaves perished from starvation.

Another cause held the American merchant marine in check for several years
succeeding the declaration of peace. If there be one