In the light of the comparison which has been made showing the relative strength of the Continental and British navies, the reader does not need to be told that the Marine Committee did not engage its fleet in major primary operations. The very existence of the Continental vessels depended upon their success in keeping outside the range of the larger guns of the Royal Navy. The Marine Committee sometimes gave specific orders to its captains to avoid the British “two-deckers.” In the minor primary operations of the Revolution some thirty or thirty-five engagements may be counted. The honors here are upon the whole evenly divided. The Americans captured ten or twelve naval vessels of the enemy. With the exceptions of the frigate “Fox,” 26, captured by Captain John Manly between New England and Newfoundland; and the sloop “Drake,” 20, and the ships “Countess of Scarborough,” 20, and “Serapis,” 44, captured by Captain John Paul Jones in European waters, the prizes of the Americans were minor naval craft, averaging ten or twelve 4’s and 6’s. The British captured or destroyed about the same number of vessels as they lost, but their prizes on the average were larger and better armed vessels than were those of the Americans. Seven of them were frigates. On the other hand the British had no victory as brilliant as that of Jones off Flamborough Head. The secondary operations of the Continental navy were more important than its primary operations. They mainly involved the protection of American commerce, the defence of certain Atlantic ports, the striking of the lines of communication of the British military forces, the attacking of the enemy’s commerce at sea, and the threatening and assailing of her unprotected coasts and ports both at home and in her outlying dependencies. Each of these forms of secondary operations will now be briefly considered.