To return to the reign of William III. During the later years of the war with France the development of privateering was more dangerous to English trade than the growth of piracy. From the very beginning of the war English commerce had suffered greatly. Nearly every year there were loud complaints against the management of the navy, and parliamentary debates ‘on the miscarriages at sea.’ ‘By an odd reverse of things,’ writes Burnet, speaking of the year 1692, ‘as we made no considerable losses when the French were masters of our seas two years before, so now when we triumphed in that element, our merchants suffered the most.’ The same thing happened in 1695 (Burnet, _Own Times_, iv. 169, 268). Much was attributed to the mismanagement of the admiralty, and as much to the incapacity of some of the commanders. The old controversy as to the relative merits of ‘tarpaulins’ and gentlemen captains revived once more. That question is the main subject discussed in the tract called _A Rough Draught of a New Model at Sea_, written by Lord Halifax, probably about 1694 (Foxcroft, _Life of Halifax_, ii. 454). It is also the subject of _A Satire on the Sea Officers_, apparently written about the end of 1690, from its references to the battle of Beachy Head (p. 137). The author’s conclusion is that tarpaulins should rule at sea. He refers also to the desire of captains to line their pockets by carrying plate for merchants instead of fighting, and he might also have mentioned the habit of exacting money from merchants for convoys, an act for which in 1689 the House of Commons committed Captain Churchill to the Tower.