Of vastly greater importance than the state navies were the privateers, a service congenial to the New England seamen from every point of view. There was “more money in it”; there was the absence of a strict and irksome discipline, and the cruises were short. The great number of privateers fitting out made it a matter of extreme difficulty to find men for the ships of the regular service, which thus not infrequently had to lie idle and unemployed. Had a tithe of the effort expended upon privateers been expended upon the building and equipment of a navy, it is not unfair to say that the general results would probably have been much better. But privateering had already been a much-indulged-in occupation. The Seven Years’ War had ended only in 1763, and during this period many American privateers were afloat. The slave trade also was a favorite New England occupation, and piracy itself at the period was not altogether disreputable if applied only to those “natural enemies,” the French and Spanish. Nearly all the officers of the new Continental navy had their first war training in privateers, and very frequently during the Revolution officers took a hand at privateering in the moments of enforced leisure when there was no naval ship to which they could be assigned. Congress authorized privateering on March 23, 1776, and a list printed by the Library of Congress shows the number and kind of vessels furnished with letters of marque by the Continental Congress. This gives a total of such of 1,697. Of these there were ships 301; brigs and brigantines, 541; schooners and sloops, 751; boats and galleys, 104. These are accredited to the several states as follows: New Hampshire, 43; Massachusetts, 626; Rhode Island, 15; Connecticut, 218; New York, 1; New Jersey, 4; Pennsylvania, 500; Maryland, 225; Virginia, 64; South Carolina, 1. Distributed by years there were afloat in 1776, 34; 1777, 69; 1778, 129; 1779, 209; 1780, 301; 1781, 550; 1783, 22. These altogether carried 14,872 guns and 58,400 men. It is, of course, almost a certainty that many of these vessels were duplicated in this list, but such duplication is more than offset by the issuance of letters of marque by the several states and in France and the West Indies which, according to an excellent authority, would carry the number to over 2,000, with 18,000 guns and 70,000 men. “Judging from the scanty information at hand concerning British privateering, it is probable that their vessels engaged in this form of warfare were considerably less numerous but decidedly superior in force to the Americans; the latter seem to have carried on an average between eight and nine guns and less than thirty-five men; the British about seventeen guns and seventy-five or more men.”[4]