In all, nearly a dozen merchantmen were captured by the energetic captain, Louis M. Coxetter, of the _Davis_. He then returned, and while trying to enter St. Augustine, Florida, grounded, and the vessel was lost. Not all of his prizes ever reached home, and it was from the recaptured vessels that the men convicted of piracy were taken. It is said that the prizes sent in, however, netted over $200,000 in gold for the crew. Coxetter himself, like most of his class, became a blockade-runner after the blockade, and England’s refusal to permit the sale of Confederate prizes in her ports made privateering unprofitable--that is, say, after January 1, 1862. Between July 19 and August 27, 1861, the privateer _Dixie_ sent in three prizes. The _Freely_, another Charleston privateer, was also a successful boat. So was the _York_. The revenue cutter _Aiken_, which was converted into the privateer _Petrel_, at Charleston, was about the most unlucky of the fleet. She went chasing the frigate _St. Lawrence_ soon after getting safely to sea, thinking the big man-o’-war was a merchantman. Certainly no men worse fitted for their task than the _Petrel’s_ crew were ever sent to sea, for even when within short range they failed to recognize the warship. They fired three guns--the first two across the bows of the _St. Lawrence_ to heave her to, and the last one at her. Then the _St. Lawrence_ opened her ports and fired three guns at the privateer. An eight-inch shell and a thirty-two-pound solid shot struck her below the water-line, the shell bursting while right in the planks. The hole made was so large that the _Petrel_ rolled to the swell and sank instantly, leaving her crew afloat in the water. Four men were drowned, and the rest were picked up by the _St. Lawrence_. There were a number of other privateers from Charleston, but they neither accomplished nor suffered anything worth especial mention. In addition, there was a fleet of small schooners that had their headquarters in the Pamlico Sound. It is worth the reader’s time to take a look at the map of the enclosed waters along the coast south of the Chesapeake Bay; it is worth any traveller’s time to visit the region. A series of long, narrow islands, built of the _débris_ of New England rocks, lie along there, enclosing the waters of Currituck, Albemarle, and Pamlico sounds. They are but narrow, and, for the most part, but barren stretches of sand. Here and there a shoal inlet cuts across this sand-bar--an inlet that is shifted to and fro, and deepened and shoaled by the wind-driven water of the sea, but always kept open somewhere by the outflow of the waters from the slope of land east of the Alleghany ridge. There are a few inlets that are never closed wholly, no matter how the set of the tide piles the sand into them, and of these the most important are known as Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets. [Illustration: Destruction of the Privateer _Petrel_ by the _St. Lawrence_.