sults.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| BRITISH VESSELS | ENEMY'S VESSELS
|---------------------------------+----------------------------------
| Merchantmen | Privateers | Merchantmen | Privateers
|----------------+----------------+----------------+-----------------
| |Re-taken| |Re-taken| |Re-taken| |Re-taken
| Taken |or Ran- | Taken |or Ran- | Taken |or Ran- | Taken |or Ran-
| [22] | somed | [22] | somed | [22] | somed | [22] | somed
-----+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+---------
1775 | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
1776 | 229 | 51 | --- | --- | 19 | --- | 6 | ---
1777 | 331 | 52 | --- | --- | 51 | 1 | 18 | ---
1778 | 359 | 87 | 5 | --- | 232 | 5 | 16 | ---
1779 | 487 | 106 | 29 | 5 | 238 | 5 | 31 | ---
1780 | 581 | 260 | 15 | 2 | 203 | 3 | 34 | 1
1781 | 587 | 211 | 38 | 6 | 277 | 10 | 40 | ---
1782 | 415 | 99 | 1 | --- | 104 | 1 | 68 | ---
1783 | 98 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 2 | 3 | ---
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Footnote 22: Including those re-taken or ransomed. W.L.C.]

[Footnote 23: A spring is a rope taken usually from the quarter (one
side of the stern) of a ship, to the anchor. By hauling upon it the
battery is turned in the direction desired.]

[Footnote 24: The leader, the _Leviathan_, was excepted, evidently
because she lay under the Hook, and her guns could not bear down
channel. She was not a fighting ship of the squadron, but an armed
storeship, although originally a ship of war, and therefore by her
thickness of side better fitted for defence than an ordinary merchant
vessel. Placing her seems to have been an afterthought, to close the
gap in the line, and prevent even the possibility of the enemy's ships
turning in there and doubling on the van. Thus Howe avoided the fatal
oversight made by Brueys twenty years later, in Aboukir Bay.]

[Footnote 25: It may be recalled that a similar disposition was made
by the Confederates at Mobile against Farragut's attack in 1864, and
that it was from these small vessels that his flagship _Hartford_
underwent her severest