Bad—amongst the wounded are my first Lieut. & Master, I intended to man her and keep her as a Consort during the Cruize, but having twenty wounded Men on board, of my own men & prisoners I thought it Best to send her home, with all the wounded men on board under the Care of the Surgeons Mate.”[424] By far the largest naval undertaking of the Revolution made by the Americans was the Penobscot Expedition. Until 1779 the general policy of those who managed the fleet of Massachusetts was to send its vessels cruising against the British transports, merchantmen, and small privateers, and to leave the coast to be defended by the seacoast establishment and by local forces. In August, 1777, the Council agreed with this policy for it then spoke of the Continental vessels, the state vessels, and the privateers as “improper” to be employed in clearing the coasts of these “vermin.”[425] In April, 1779, however, it disapproved this policy. It now in a message to the House submitted whether, instead of sending the armed vessels on long cruises after prizes, it would not have been vastly more to the advantage and profit of the state to have employed them cruising on the coast of Massachusetts for the protection of trade and the defence of harbors and seacoast, “which have been left in such an unguarded and defenceless Situation that where we have taken one Vessel of the Enemy their small privateers out of New York have taken ten from us.”[426] It would seem that the Board of War was right in employing its fleet in prize-getting rather than in defensive warfare. The capturing of small privateers and of merchantmen were the only enterprises for which the Revolutionary fleets were adapted. Those vessels that cruised continually near the American coast, sooner or later, fell foul of the stouter and better armed ships of the enemy. Moreover, the Board of War, had it not responded to the commercial spirit of the times, would have been compelled to adopt the methods of the privateers, did it wish to succeed in its competition with them for seamen.