d, the story of the cruises of some of the privateers at this time
might be made as exciting as any tale of fiction.

The _Wasp_, Captain Blakeley, made a successful cruise southward,
vanquishing the _Reindeer_, _Avon_, and _Atlanta_. She was lost at sea
in October, 1814, and was never heard of afterward. Captain Warrington
cruised in the _Peacock_ in the spring of 1814. He captured the
_Epervier_, a most valuable prize. In May he crossed the Atlantic to the
Bay of Biscay, captured fourteen merchant vessels, and returned to New
York. At the same time Barney was very active with a flotilla of
gun-boats on the waters of Chesapeake Bay, and in August, having
destroyed his vessels to keep them from the British, he and his men
assisted in the battle of Bladensburg.

At the beginning of 1815, Decatur was in command of a small squadron at
New York. The _President_ was his flag-ship. With her alone he sailed
out of New York Harbor on a dark night, eluded the blockading fleet, and
at dawn the next morning was chased by four British vessels. The
_President_ was deeply laden for a long cruise. One of her pursuers (the
_Endymion_) overtook her, when a sharp action began. The two frigates
ran side by side before the wind for two hours in a running fight,
during which the _Endymion_ was so crippled that she was about to strike
her colors. At that moment the other pursuers came up, and the
_President_ was captured, not by a single vessel, but by a squadron.

The other vessels of Decatur's squadron, ignorant of the fate of the
_President_, sailed for an appointed gathering-place in the South
Atlantic Ocean. Captain Biddle, in the _Hornet_, captured the _Penguin_
in March, after a conflict which called forth the highest praises for
the American commander. Afterward, while the _Hornet_ and _Peacock_ were
sailing together, they were chased by the _Cornwallis_, a British 74.
They escaped, and the _Peacock_, continuing her cruise eastward,
captured the _Nautilus_ in the Straits of Sunda, the last vessel
captured in the war.

The American privateers made such havoc among English shipping that the
mercantile community were dismayed. "One of these sea-devils," said a
London newspaper, "is seldom caught; but they impudently defy the
English privateers and heavy 74's. Only think--thirteen guineas for one
hundred pounds were paid to insure a vessel across the Irish Channel!"
They had captured or destroyed during the war about sixteen hundred