er, he wrote the weather had not yet enabled him to escape. On
December 30, however, she sailed; but returning on April 4, the
blockaders drove her into Salem, whence she could not reach Boston
until April 17, 1814, and there remained until the 17th of the
following December. Her last successful battle, under his command, was
on February 20, 1815, more than two years after she captured the
"Java." When the war ended the only United States vessels on the ocean
were the "Constitution," three sloops--the "Wasp," "Hornet," and
"Peacock "--and the brig "Tom Bowline." The smaller vessels of the
navy, and the privateers, owing to their much lighter draft, got out
more readily; but neither singly nor collectively did they constitute
a serious menace to convoys, nor to the scattered cruisers of the
enemy. These, therefore, were perfectly free to pursue their
operations without fear of surprise.

On the other hand, because of this concentration along the shores of
the United States, the vessels that did escape went prepared more and
more for long absences and distant operations. On the sea "the weight
of the enemy's force," to use again the words of the Admiralty, "was
employed at a distance from the North American station." Whereas, at
the first, most captures by Americans were made near the United
States, after the spring of 1813 there is an increasing indication of
their being most successfully sought abroad; and during the last nine
months of the war, when peace prevailed throughout the world except
between the United States and Great Britain, when the Chesapeake was
British waters, when Washington was being burned and Baltimore
threatened, when the American invasion of Canada had given place to
the British invasion of New York, when New Orleans and Mobile were
both being attacked,--it was the coasts of Europe, and the narrow seas
over which England had claimed immemorial sovereignty, that witnessed
the most audacious and successful ventures of American cruisers. The
prizes taken in these quarters were to those on the hither side of the
Atlantic as two to one. To this contributed also the commercial
blockade, after its extension over the entire seaboard of the United
States, in April, 1814. The practically absolute exclusion of American
commerce from the ocean is testified by the exports of 1814, which
amounted to not quite $7,000,000;[514] whereas in 1807, the last full
year of unrestricted trade, they had been $108,000,000.