Private naval enterprise throughout the Revolution was exceedingly active in Massachusetts. In 1775, some months before the General Court granted letters of marque, Massachusetts citizens, unauthorized, were capturing the vessels of the enemy. Scarcely a fortnight after the battles of Lexington and Concord men from New Bedford and Dartmouth fitted out a vessel and attacked and cut out from a harbor in Martha’s Vineyard a prize of the British sloop of war “Falcon,” 16. This act was called forth by the captures which the “Falcon” had made from the people of Buzzard’s Bay. On June 12, 1775, the inhabitants of Machias, Maine, had captured the King’s sloop “Margaretta,” Lieutenant Moore, after mortally wounding the commander and inflicting a loss of fourteen men. Still other British vessels were captured off the coast of Maine during the summer of 1775.[414] With the act of November 1, 1775, granting to the Council the power to issue letters of marque and reprisal, all such private enterprises as the above, when done under the authority of a commission, were legal. It does not appear however that Massachusetts granted many commissions until the second half of 1776. In 1777 she granted 96 commissions. The best year was 1779 when she issued 222 commissions; the year 1781 with 216 commissions was not far behind. The total number of commissions issued by Massachusetts for the years 1777 to 1783 was 998.[415] In 1779 one hundred and eighty-four prizes captured by privateers were libelled in the Massachusetts prize courts.[416] The privateering industry for this year was very active. The following is an extract from a letter dated May 16, 1779, written from a Massachusetts seaport: “Privateering was never more in vogue than at present; two or three privateers sail every week from this port, and men seem as plenty as grasshoppers in the field; no vessel being detained an hour for want of them. We have near 1,000 prisoners on board the guard-ships in Boston, and a great balance due us from the enemy. Cruisers from New York, &c are daily brought in, and often by vessels of inferior force; our privateersmen being as confident of victory, when upon an equal footing with the English, as these were of gaining it of the French in the last war.”[417] The rivalry between the state service and the privateers for seamen was exceedingly active. The latter service was always the more popular. In 1779 the Council recommended that some effectual measures be taken to prevent the owners of private ships of war and merchantmen from seducing seamen away that were engaged in the public service. It declared that proper encouragement must be given to state officers and seamen, and that commanders must have the aid of the government in manning their vessels, “or they will lie by the Walls and so be of little or no service.”[418] In 1778 the General Court found some difficulty in securing commanders.