breed to sulk or whine in port. Twelve hundred of them were killed or
made prisoners during the Revolution. They were to be found in the
Army and Navy and behind the guns of privateers. There were twenty-five
Nantucket whalemen in the crew of the Ranger when Paul Jones steered
her across the Atlantic on that famous cruise which inspired the old
forecastle song that begins

'Tis of the gallant Yankee ship
That flew the Stripes and Stars,
And the whistling wind from the west nor'west
Blew through her pitch pine spars.
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys,
She hung upon the gale.
On an autumn night we raised the light
Off the Old Head of Kinsale.

Pitiful as was the situation of Nantucket, with its only industry wiped
out and two hundred widows among the eight hundred families left on the
island, the aftermath of war seemed almost as ruinous along the whole
Atlantic coast. More ships could be built and there were thousands of
adventurous sailors to man them, but where were the markets for the
product of the farms and mills and plantations? The ports of Europe had
been so long closed to American shipping that little demand was left for
American goods. To the Government of England the people of the Republic
were no longer fellow-countrymen but foreigners. As such they were
subject to the Navigation Acts, and no cargoes could be sent to that
kingdom unless in British vessels. The flourishing trade with the West
Indies was made impossible for the same reason, a special Order in
Council aiming at one fell stroke to "put an end to the building and
increase of American vessels" and to finish the careers of three hundred
West Indiamen already afloat. In the islands themselves the results
were appalling. Fifteen thousand slaves died of starvation because the
American traders were compelled to cease bringing them dried fish
and corn during seasons in which their own crops were destroyed by
hurricanes.

In 1776, one-third of the seagoing merchant marine of Great Britain had
been bought or built to order in America because lumber was cheaper
and wages were lower. This lucrative business was killed by a law which
denied Englishmen the privilege of purchasing ships built in American
yards. So narrow and bitter was this commercial enmity, so ardent
this desire to banish the Stars and Stripes from blue water, that Lord
Sheffield in 1784 advised Parliament that the pirates of Algiers and
Tripoli r