The War of 1812 was won, so far as it was won at all, on the ocean.  In the land operations from the very beginning the Americans came off second best; and the one battle of importance in which they were the victors—­the battle of New Orleans—­was without influence upon the result, having been fought after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent.  But on the ocean the honors were all taken by the Americans, and no small share of these honors fell to the private armed navy of privateers.  As the war progressed these vessels became in type more like the regular sloop-of-war, for the earlier craft, while useful before the British began sending out their merchantmen under convoy, proved to be too small to fight and too light to escape destruction from one well-aimed broadside.  The privateer of 1813 was usually about 115 to 120 feet long on the spar-deck, 31 feet beam, and rigged as a brig or ship.  They were always fast sailers, and notable for sailing close to the wind.  While armed to fight, if need be, that was not their purpose, and a privateersman who gained the reputation among owners of being a fighting captain was likely to go long without a command.  Accordingly, these vessels were lightly built and over-rigged (according to the ideas of British naval construction), for speed was the great desideratum.  They were at once the admiration and the envy of the British, who imitated their models without success and tried to utilize them for cruisers when captured, but destroyed their sailing qualities by altering their rig and strengthening their hulls at the expense of lightness and symmetry.

I have already referred to Michael Scott’s famous story of sea life, “Tom Cringle’s Log,” which, though in form a work of fiction, contains so many accounts of actual happenings, and expresses so fully the ideas of the British naval officer of that time, that it may well be quoted in a work of historical character.  Tom Cringle, after detailing with a lively description the capture of a Yankee privateer, says that she was assigned to him for his next command.  He had seen her under weigh, had admired her trim model, her tapering spars, her taut cordage, and the swiftness with which she came about and reached to windward.  He thus describes the change the British outfitters made in her: 

“When I had last seen her she was the most beautiful little craft, both in hull and rigging, that ever delighted the eyes of a sailor; but the dock yard riggers and carpenters had fairly bedeviled her at least so far as appearances went.  First, they had replaced the light rail on her gunwale by heavy, solid bulwarks four feet high, surmounted by hammock nettings at least another foot; so that the symmetrical little vessel, that formerly floated on the foam light as a seagull, now looked like a clumsy, dish-shaped Dutch dogger.  Her long, slender wands of masts, which used to swing about as if there were neither shrouds nor stays to support them, were now as taut and stiff as