The General Assembly in the May session of 1779, as an inducement to enlistment, granted seamen and marines additional bounties and pensions. Recruits entering for the rest of the war were now to receive $750 and one hundred acres of land. They were to be furnished upon enlistment, and once a year thereafterwards, with a complete suit of clothes. Naval officers were entitled to a “grant of the like quantity of lands as is allowed to officers of the same rank in the Virginia regiments on continental establishment.” Disabled sailors and the widows of the slain were entitled to immediate relief, and an annual pension. At the October session of this year, moved by the need for money and the impossibility of fitting out the whole fleet, the General Assembly ordered the governor to sell nine of the armed vessels, and to equip and man the remaining six with all diligence. For some reason the governor did not carry out the order. There was probably little market for the vessels.[530] The years 1780 and 1781 were marked by a renewed naval activity in Virginia. It is recalled that the theater of war had now shifted to the Southern states. Savannah was in the hands of the enemy. Charleston surrendered in May, 1780. By the fall of that year the lowlands of the states to the south of Virginia were generally in the possession of the British. Apparently Virginia would be the next to feel the rough hand of the conquering enemy. British privateers and naval craft lay off the mouths of the Virginia rivers, and captured all her vessels that ventured towards the Bay or the sea. Early in 1780 it was apprehended that the enemy meditated an invasion of the coasts of the state. When the General Assembly came together in May, 1780, it at once took measures for the protection of the coasts. It passed “an act for putting the eastern frontier of this commonwealth into a posture of defence.” This act, after providing for calling out the militia in the seaport counties, ordered the Governor and Council to direct the Commissioner of the Navy to immediately make ready for service in the Bay and on the seacoast the ships “Thetis,” “Tempest,” and “Dragon,” the brig “Jefferson,” and the galleys “Henry,” “Accomac,” and “Diligence.” Three hundred marines, to be commanded by five captains and fifteen lieutenants, were to be recruited. Marines and sailors who enlisted for three years were to receive a bounty of $1,000. Naval officers were put upon the same footing in regard to pay, rations, and privileges as officers of the same rank in the land service.[531]