ree days before the action between the
"Constitution" and "Java." On February 21, three days before the
"Hornet" sank the "Peacock," Warren wrote that in compliance with the
orders of November 27 this blockade had been put in force. The ship
"Emily," from Baltimore for Lisbon, under a British license, with a
cargo of flour, was turned back when attempting to go to sea from the
Chesapeake, about February 5; Warren indorsing on her papers that the
bay had been placed under rigorous blockade the day before.[10]
Captain Stewart, the senior United States officer at Norfolk, notified
his Government of these facts on February 10.[11] Soon after, by an
Order in Council dated March 30, the measure was extended to New York,
Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah, and the Mississippi River.[12] Later
in the year Warren, by a sweeping proclamation, dated November 16,[13]
widened its scope to cover Long Island Sound, inside of Montauk and
Black Point; the latter being on the Connecticut shore, eight miles
west of New London. From thence it applied not only to the ports
named, but to all inlets whatsoever, southward, as far as the Florida
boundary. Narragansett Bay and the rest of New England remained still
exempt.

These restrictions, together with the increase of Warren's force and
the operations of 1813 in the Chesapeake, may be considered as
initiating the second stage of the war, when Great Britain no longer
cherished hopes of any other solution than by the sword, but still was
restrained in the exercise of her power by the conflict with Napoleon.
With the downfall of the latter, in April, 1814, began the third and
final act, when she was more at liberty to let loose her strength, to
terminate a conflict at once weakening and exasperating. It is not
without significance that the treaty of peace with the restored
Bourbon government of France was signed May 30, 1814,[14] and that on
May 31 was issued a proclamation placing under strict and rigorous
blockade, not merely specified places, but "all the ports, harbors,
bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and sea-coasts of the
United States," from the border of New Brunswick to that of
Florida.[15] In form, this was only the public notification of a
measure already instituted by Warren's successor, Cochrane, embracing
Newport, Boston, and the East under restrictions heretofore limited to
New York--including Long Island Sound--and the coast southward; but it
was not merely the as