When war was declared, there were a number of these in each of the American ports. There were pilot-boats, also, built to race with each other, blow high or blow low. The merchants had seen that war would come. They had placed orders for more guns with the foundry, and for more ammunition with the makers. They had laid in muskets and cutlasses and provisions and spare sails. There was little if any need for altering the sides of the ships--for piercing the bulwarks with ports--for that was the day of West India pirates, and all ships carried some guns; but amidships in most of them additional stanchions were placed to brace the deck, and there the Long Tom of song and story was mounted--the long, thick-breeched gun that would stand a heavy charge of powder and throw a round ball, weighing sometimes as high as thirty-two pounds, a mile and more, with but moderate elevation of the muzzle. The small pilot-boats carried anything they could stand under, or get--a long-nine, with a few swivels and a crew of fifty or sixty men who carried muskets and knew how to use them would do. If the men were all seamen as well as good shots, so much the better, but if not, no matter. The landsman who could see through the sights of a musket was by no means refused. He was welcomed and called a marine. The haymaker accustomed to a pitchfork was just the man to handle a boarding-pike. And so the crews were quickly filled, and then it was up anchor and away to sea for revenge, lawful plunder, and glory. Let the reader make no mistake about the objects in view when they went to sea. The old sailors were going to repay the scars of the British cat and press-gang manacles that many of them wore; they were going for lawful prizes, and they were inspired by the thought that they were to fight for the honor of “the gridiron flag.” The very bravest fights of the whole war--fights in which the Americans unquestionably won through superior pluck--were the fights made by the crews like that of the _General Armstrong_ and other American privateers. That the owners of these privateers had something in mind besides the gaining of wealth will appear at a glance over the list of names of these privateers, of which 250 were commissioned during the war. There were three named _Revenge_, one _Retaliation_, one _Orders in Council_, one _Right of Search_, one _Rattlesnake_, one _Poor Sailor_, one _Patriot_, one _Teaser_, one _Thrasher_, one _United We Stand_, one _Divided We Fall_, one _Scourge_, one _Liberty_, one _True-Blooded Yankee_, one _Castigator_, and so on. And there were others with names significant in still other directions--the _Black Joke_, the _Frolic_, and the _Flirt_, for instance; or the _Saratoga_, the _Yorktown_, the _John Paul Jones_, the _Macedonian_, and the _Guerrière_.