Seeing that
ordinary commerce was likely to be a very precarious undertaking, her
owners spent the months of July and August in preparing her
deliberately for her new occupation. Her upper deck was removed, and
sides filled in solid. She was given larger yards and loftier spars
than before; the greatly increased number of men carried by a
privateer, for fighting and for manning prizes, enabling canvas to be
handled with greater rapidity and certainty. She received a battery of
very respectable force for those days, so that she could repel the
smaller classes of ships of war, which formed a large proportion of
the enemy's cruisers. Thus fitted to fight or run, and having very
superior speed, she was often chased, but never caught. During the two
and a half years of war she made four cruises of four months each;
taking in all forty-one prizes, twenty-seven of which reached port and
realized $1,100,000, after deducting expenses and government charges.
As half of this went to the ship's company, the owners netted $550,000
for sixteen months' active use of the ship. Her invariable cruising
ground was from the English Channel south, to the latitude of the
Canary Islands.[507]

The United States having declared war, the Americans enjoyed the
advantage of the first blow at the enemy's trade. The reduced numbers
of vessels on the British transatlantic stations, and the perplexity
induced by Rodgers' movement, combined to restrict the injury to
American shipping. A number of prizes were made, doubtless; but as
nearly as can be ascertained not over seventy American merchant ships
were taken in the first three months of the war. Of these,
thirty-eight are reported as brought under the jurisdiction of the
Vice-Admiralty Court at Halifax, and twenty-four as captured on the
Jamaica station. News of the war not being received by the British
squadrons in Europe until early in August, only one capture there
appears before October 1, except from the Mediterranean. There Captain
Usher on September 6 wrote from Gibraltar that all the Americans on
their way down the Sea--that is, out of the Straits--had been
taken.[508] In like manner, though with somewhat better fortune,
thirty or forty American ships from the Baltic were driven to take
refuge in the neutral Swedish port of Gottenburg, and remained
war-bound.[509] That the British cruisers were not inactive in
protecting the threatened shores and waters of Nova Scotia and the St.
Lawrenc