The colony made rapid progress, although now and then checked by the fact that its exposed position made it in time of war a favorite point of attack by enemies of England. The numerous harbors along the coast were, in such troublous periods, infested by privateers, who seriously interfered with the commerce of the island. In the war between Great Britain and France, commencing in 1756, the West Indies was the theatre of a prolonged conflict, into which the Barbadians entered with zeal, supplying money and troops to the English side, and oftentimes suffering from reverses. Sidenote: Commerce. Before the Navigation Acts (page 104, § 44), by which England sought to compel all her colonists to trade with her alone, the Dutch were good customers for Barbados sugar; after that, English merchants having a monopoly of the traffic, the planters had much reason to complain. Nevertheless, the majority were stanch Tories, and remained so throughout the Revolutionary war. Many Barbadians settled from time to time upon the mainland, particularly in the Carolinas. We have seen that Sir John Yeamans, a Barbados planter, led several hundred of his fellow-islanders thither (1664), and founded a town on Cape Fear river (page 89, § 36). Sidenote: St. Vincent. _St. Vincent_, a hundred miles west of Barbados, although discovered by Columbus in 1498 was unclaimed until 1627, when it was granted to the Earl of Carlisle by Charles I., along with others of the Windward group. In 1722, the Duke of Montagu came into possession of it; and then immigrants were introduced, who exported sugar, rum, molasses, and arrowroot. Sidenote: Other Windward islands. _St. Lucia_ was settled by the English in 1639; its ownership was long passed back and forth by France and England, but in 1794 the latter secured permanent possession. The English flag was raised over _Tobago_ in 1580, but the island was alternately held by English and Dutch until 1814, since which date the proprietorship of the former has been undisputed. _Grenada_ and the _Grenadines_, colonized by the French, first came into English possession under the treaty of 1763. _Trinidad_, the southernmost of the chain of islands and one of the most valuable, was occupied by the Spanish until 1797, when it was yielded up to Great Britain, under show of force; to-day it is one of the most progressive of the smaller English dependencies. Sidenotes: Early settlement. Changes in ownership.