have
been a long voyage; and the young captain headed his craft for the
opening, but soon found himself on the rocks. Luckily, the vessel
backed off, and the crew set about repairing damages. While thus
engaged, the great, blunt head of a whale was seen in the narrow
channel; and, after blowing a column of water high in the air, the
monster swam lazily through the strait. "If a whale can go through
that channel, I can," quoth "Cap'n Nat." And he forthwith did so.
Quick of observation, and prompt of action, the sailors of the United
States became the foremost seamen of the world, and guided their
little vessels over every known sea.

But the growing commerce of the United States was destined to meet a
series of checks, that seemed for a time likely to destroy it forever.
England, jealous of the encroachments of the Americans upon the broad
seas of which she had long called herself the mistress, began a series
of outrages upon American ships, and, not content with acting in open
hostility, incited the piratical rulers of Tripoli and Algiers to make
war upon American shipping. In this volume it is not my purpose to
tell of the means adopted by England to let the swarming ships of the
Barbary pirates out of the Mediterranean Sea, to prey upon the vessels
of the United States; nor do I intend to tell how, after peaceful
arguments had been exhausted, Decatur and Preble, with a fleet of
American vessels and a handful of fighting jack-tars, crossed the
ocean, and thrashed the pirates of the Mediterranean into subjection.
That may well be left for future consideration, and this chapter
devoted to a history of the acts of insolence and oppression on the
part of England, that finally forced the United States to declare war
against a power so vastly superior to them in wealth, population, and
military and naval strength.

The first great and crying outrage, protested against by the
statesmen, the newspapers, and the people of the United States, was
the so-called right of search. By this was meant the right claimed by
every British man-of-war to stop an American vessel on the high seas,
muster her crew on the forecastle, and seize and carry away any sailor
thought to be a native of Great Britain. This outrageous act was
committed time and time again by the commanders of British frigates,
who knew no easier way of filling up a short-handed crew than by
stopping some passing vessel flying the stars and stripes, and taking
from her