This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. Next morning, by Dormer's advice, I exercised my men at their guns, and in tacking and veering, and we continued this sort of practice every day, and also manoeuvred the ship in every way that could possibly occur in action. We also saw all our boarding nettings properly fitted, and toggled our lifts and braces, snaked all our stays and backstays, and, in short, did all that experience could devise to make the Black Prince perfectly ready to meet any foe. We also made arrangements in case of fire, and taught our black sail-trimmers how to act in case any necessity might arise for their services being required to extinguish flames in action. All these things took time, and soon after passing the Scillys we met a south-west wind that at first we were able to beat against, but which soon forced us to shorten sail, and after a time we could neither tack nor veer, and had to furl our square-sails, and try under fore and main stay-sails, and to house our jibboom and top gallant-masts, and get the spritsail yard fore and aft. After four days, during which we were unable to open the hatches or light a fire, the gale moderated and the wind drew round to the north-west, so that we were again able to lie our course, and I intended that we should keep well for Finisterre, in order to get a departure; but we had been driven so far to the westward of what I thought, that we were embayed in the Bay of Biscay, and sighted the north coast of Spain some thirty leagues to the eastward of that point. I brought the ship to the wind on the port tack, to make a leg to the northward, and had hardly made above four leagues on that course when the look-out man reported a sail on our lee bow. "Where away?" "Just under the black cloud, sir. She is not...

Winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award A Massachusetts Center for the Book "Must-Read" Finalist for the New England Society Book Award Finalist for the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Book Award The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. The men who owned the ships, as well as their captains and crew, would divide the profits of a successful cruise—and suffer all the more if their ship was captured or sunk, with privateersmen facing hellish conditions on British prison hulks, where they were treated not as enemy combatants but as pirates. Some Americans viewed them similarly, as cynical opportunists whose only aim was loot. Yet Dolin shows that privateersmen were as patriotic as their fellow Americans, and moreover that they greatly contributed to the war’s success: diverting critical British resources to protecting their shipping, playing a key role in bringing France into the war on the side of the United States, providing much-needed supplies at home, and bolstering the new nation’s confidence that it might actually defeat the most powerful military force in the world. Creating an entirely new pantheon of Revolutionary heroes, Dolin reclaims such forgotten privateersmen as Captain Jonathan Haraden and Offin Boardman, putting their exploits, and sacrifices, at the very center of the conflict. Abounding in tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents this nation’s first war as we have rarely seen it before.