Now a man, whether a sailor or a politician, or whatever else, is very largely the child of his age. That is to say, given a lawless, unprincipled, corrupt period, it is more than likely that any particular individual will be found to exhibit in his activities the marks of that age. And therefore, bearing such facts as these in mind, it becomes perfectly comprehensible that the eighteenth century should have been the flourishing period of English sea-robbery. Add just one item more—the continual period of unrest caused by years of international wars and the rumours of war, and you are not surprised that the call of the sea was accepted by so many more hundreds of men than ever before in the history of the nation. But naval wars did not mean merely that more men were wanted to work the ship which fought our battles; there was such an encouragement and incentive to skippers and capitalists to undertake privateering that not even in the Elizabethan age had so many ships and men taken part in that kind of undertaking. So, instead of privateering being merely an exceptional activity during an occasional period of hostilities, it became, owing to long drawn-out wars, a regular, definite profession. There was in it every opportunity to indulge both personal and national hatred of the foreigner; to enjoy a series of fine adventures, and then to return home with an accumulation of glory and prizes. Side by side with this—and well illustrating the tone of the age—smuggling had become an almost irrepressible national evil. In the history of smuggling you not infrequently found that the preliminary steps to this dishonest livelihood were as follows: First, the man was employed as an honest fisherman; then, finding this did not pay him, he became a privateer, or else in the King’s service serving on board a Revenue cutter. Then, being more anxious for wealth, he threw in his lot with the very men he had been chasing, and became either an out-and-out smuggler or else a pirate. For, as has been insisted on more than once in previous chapters, the line of demarcation between privateering and piracy, though perfectly visible to lawyers, was not always sufficiently strong to keep the roving seaman within the limitations of legal livelihood. In a word, as it is always difficult suddenly to break a habit, and as this immense body of seamen had so long been accustomed to earning their money by attacking other ships, so in an age that had but little respect for what was lawful, it was really not surprising that dozens of ships put to sea as downright pirates or else as acknowledged smugglers. In this present volume we are concerned only with the first of these two classes.