in quick succession.
Being then two thirds of the way to the English Channel, he determined
to try the North Sea, shaping his course to intercept vessels bound
either by the north or south of Ireland. Not a sail was met until the
Shetland Islands were reached, and there were found only Danes, which,
though Denmark was in hostility with Great Britain, were trading under
British licenses. The "President" remained in the North Sea until the
end of July, but made only two prizes, although she lay in wait for
convoys of whose sailing accounts were received. Having renewed her
supply of water at Bergen, in Norway, she returned to the Atlantic,
made three captures off the north coast of Ireland, and thence beat
back to the Banks, where two stray homeward-bound West Indiamen were
at last caught. From there the ship made her way, still with a
constant head wind, to Nantucket, off which was captured a British
man-of-war schooner, tender to the admiral. On September 27 she
anchored in Narragansett Bay, having been absent almost five months,
and made twelve prizes, few of which were valuable. One, however, was
a mail packet to Halifax, the capture of which, as of its
predecessors, was noted by Prevost.[129]

The "Congress" was still less successful in material result. She
followed a course which had hitherto been a favorite with American
captains, and which Rodgers had suggested as alternative to his own;
southeast, passing near the Cape Verde Islands, to the equator between
longitudes 24 deg. and 31 deg. west; thence to the coast of Brazil, and so
home, by a route which carried her well clear of the West India
Islands. She entered Portsmouth, New Hampshire, December 14, having
spent seven months making this wide sweep; in the course of which
three prizes only were taken.[130] It will be remembered that the
"Chesapeake," which had returned only a month before the "Congress"
sailed, had taken much the same direction with similar slight result.

These cruises were primarily commerce-destroying, and were pursued in
that spirit, although with the full purpose of fighting should
occasion arise. The paucity of result is doubtless to be attributed to
the prey being sought chiefly on the high seas, too far away from the
points of arrival and departure. The convoy system, rigidly enforced,
as captured British correspondence shows, cleared the seas of British
vessels, except in the spots where they were found congested,
concentrated, by t