een of the
crew were thus saved, but more than fourscore brave fellows went down
with her. The American vessel herself was damaged not a little by the
violence of the explosion.

This was not the only case during this year in which a British
man-of-war met defeat at the guns of a Yankee privateer. The
"Hinchinbrooke," sloop-of-war fourteen; the "York," tender twelve; and
the "Enterprise," ten guns,--all struck their colors to private armed
vessels flying the stars and stripes.

By 1778 the privateers under the British flag were afloat in no small
number. America had no commerce on which they might prey, and they
looked forward only to recapturing those British vessels that had been
taken by Yankee privateers and sent homeward. That so many British
vessels should have found profitable employment in this pursuit, is in
itself a speaking tribute to the activity of the American private
armed navy.

During the Revolution, as during the second war with Great Britain in
1812, Salem, Mass., and Baltimore, Md., were the principal points from
which privateers hailed. In all the early wars of the United States,
the term "Salem privateer" carried with it a picture of a fleet
schooner, manned with a picked crew of able seamen, commanded by a
lanky Yankee skipper who knew the byways of old ocean as well as the
highways of trade, armed with eight, four, or six pounders, and a
heavy "Long Tom" amidships. Scores of such craft sailed from Salem
during the Revolution; and hardly a week passed without two or three
returning privateers entering the little port and discharging their
crews, to keep the little village in a turmoil until their prize money
was spent, or, to use the sailors' phrase, until "no shot was left in
the locker."

One of the most successful of the Salem privateers was the
"Pickering," a craft carrying a battery of sixteen guns, and a crew of
forty-seven men. On one cruise she fought an engagement of an hour and
a half with a British cutter of twenty guns; and so roughly did she
handle the enemy, that he was glad to sheer off. A day of two later,
the "Pickering" overhauled the "Golden Eagle," a large schooner of
twenty-two guns and fifty-seven men. The action which followed was
ended by the schooner striking her flag. A prize crew was then put
aboard the "Golden Eagle," and she was ordered to follow in the wake
of her captor. Three days later the British sloop-of-war "Achilles"
hove in sight, and gave chase to the p