Another factor in the naval situation of the Americans was the existence of state navies in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The fleet of Massachusetts, comprising sixteen armed vessels, was the most active and effective of the state fleets. The Virginia navy numbering about fifty vessels, was poorly equipped and rendered little service. These fleets were made up of all sorts of naval craft; sailing vessels variously rigged, fire-ships, floating batteries, barges, row-galleys with and without sails, half-galleys, and boats of all sizes. Most of this craft was designed for the defence of coasts, rivers, and towns. This was especially true of the galleys, which were shallow vessels, some seventy or eighty feet in length, carrying two or three cannon, sometimes as large as 36’s or 42’s. Only some sixty of these vessels of the state navies were well adapted for deep-sea navigation.[197] To a limited extent both privateers and state vessels were placed at the service of the Marine Committee. There were cruises, expeditions, and defences of towns, in which two, or the three, services participated. In such cases the senior Continental captain was regularly the ranking officer, or the commodore of the fleet, as it was then expressed. To the extent that state vessels and privateers might be concerted with the Continental vessels, it would seem at first blush that they undoubtedly were elements of naval strength to the Marine Committee. This was by no means true. These concerted expeditions proved disappointing, and when too late the Committee became wary of them. Proper subordination, upon which naval success so much depends, could not be obtained in these mixed fleets. The commander of a state vessel or the master of a privateer, for aught either could see, subtended as large an angle in maritime affairs, as an officer of Congress, which body was to them nebulous, uncertain, and irresolute. If the location and physical form of colonial America with reference to the sea tended to develop a maritime people, they also made most difficult the problems of naval defence. As has been pointed out, the territory of the revolting colonies comprised a narrow band of seacoast divided into a number of peninsulas. All the large towns were seaports. Had the peninsulas been islands, their defence against the great sea-power of England would have been an impossibility. The connections by land on the west side of the thirteen colonies gave Washington a most valuable line of communications from Canada to Florida. Had the revolting territory lain compactly, approaching a square in shape, with a narrow frontage on the sea, its naval defence would have been a simple problem.