care of
themselves--and a British line-of-battle ship, by which we were chased
for six hours, but which we had little difficulty in escaping by jamming
the schooner close upon a wind. The unsophisticated reader may perhaps
be inclined to wonder why we should have been chased by one of our own
men-o'-war; and why, being chased, we should have taken any trouble to
escape from her. The fact, however, was that the _Dolphin_ was
altogether too rakish-looking a craft to be mistaken for a plodding
merchantman, her long, low, beamy hull, taunt, tapering spars, and broad
spread of superbly-cut canvas proclaimed her a sea-rover as far as the
eye could distinguish her; and, as the ensign carried was at that time
but an indifferent guarantee of a vessel's nationality, it was the
imperative duty of our men-o'-war, when falling in with such a craft, to
make sure, if possible, that she was not an enemy and a danger to our
commerce. Our friend the two-decker was therefore quite justified in
her endeavour to get alongside us and obtain a sight of our papers; and
had we possessed any assurance that her delicate attentions would have
ended there, her people would have been quite welcome to come aboard us,
and overhaul the schooner and her papers to their heart's content. But,
unfortunately, we had no such assurance. There was, at the time of
which I am now writing, a very great difficulty in procuring men enough
to adequately man our ships of war, and there was therefore no
alternative left to the government but to resort to the process of
impressment, a process which naval officers were too often apt to adopt
with scant discrimination. In their anxiety to secure a full complement
for their ships they deemed themselves justified not only in pressing
men ashore, but even in boarding the merchantmen of their own nation
upon the high seas and impressing so many men out of them that instances
were by no means rare of traders being subsequently lost through being
thus made so short-handed that their crews were insufficient in number
and strength to successfully battle against bad weather. The crews of
vessels furnished with letters of marque were nominally protected from
impressment; but we were fully aware that the protection was only
nominal, and altogether insufficient; hence it came about that a British
privateer was always very much more anxious to escape from a man-o'-war
flying the colours of her own country than she was to avoid