The British had naval bases in America that left little to be desired. When they seized New York in September, 1776, they obtained not only a military point of the highest strategic value, but also a secure naval station for fitting out and refitting their privateers and naval ships. From New York, centrally situated with reference to the revolting colonies, their vessels proceeded along the Atlantic coast both northward and southward on the outlook for American merchantmen, privateers, and naval craft. Their favorite patrolling grounds were off the entrances of Delaware, Chesapeake, and Narragansett bays. British vessels were also to be found off Boston Bay, Ocracoke Inlet, Cape Fear, Charleston, and Savannah. The British occupation of Newport from 1776 to 1779, and of Savannah from 1778, and Charleston from 1780, to the end of the war, afforded other convenient stations for British operations against the shipping of the colonies. St. Augustine was a port of much importance in the movements of the enemy’s smaller ships. The naval stations at Halifax, Jamaica, and the Bermudas, while not so convenient as those enumerated, were sources of naval strength to the British. Halifax was a base for the naval operations against New England. It scarcely needs to be said that the ports mentioned were in a way secondary bases of operations, and that England’s center for ships, seamen, and supplies of all sorts was the British Isles. From this account of the respective naval stations in America of the two combatants, one proceeds naturally to a comparison of their fleets. The rude naval craft of the Americans, two-thirds of which were made-over merchantmen, was outclassed by the vessels of the Royal Navy at every point. Disregarding the fleets of Washington and Arnold, there were during the Revolution fifty-six armed vessels in the American navy, mounting on the average about twenty guns. The vessels in the British navy when the Revolution opened in 1775 numbered 270, and when it closed, 468.[200] Of this latter number, 174 were ships of the line, each mounting between sixty and one hundred guns. The naval force of the Americans when it was at its maximum in the fall of 1776 consisted of 27 ships, mounting on the average twenty guns.[201] At the same time the British had on the American station, besides a number of small craft, 71 ships, which mounted on the average twenty-eight guns.[202] Of these, two were 64’s; one, a 60; seven, 50’s; and three, 44’s. The British vessels, being so much larger than the American, were naturally armed with much heavier guns. Very few 18-pounders were to be found in the Continental navy. The frigates were usually mounted with 12’s, 9’s, and 6’s; and many of the smaller craft with 6’s and 4’s. The guns on the larger British ships mounted 18’s, 24’s, 32’s, and 42’s.