In 1800, the act regulating privateers gave to them the entire prize captured, but in March, 1812, another act was passed appropriating two per cent. to collectors, to be used as a fund for the support of the widows and orphans of those who fell in combat. This was afterwards modified so as to allow the disabled the benefit of the fund. On the 19th of July the act Was amended, and two per cent. placed in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, and privateersmen put on the pension list with the navy. A few days after a bill passed the House, allowing twenty-five dollars bounty for every prisoner taken. This was increased the next session to one hundred dollars. [Sidenote: Aug. 2.] The success attending our privateersmen, and the injury they inflicted on the enemy, gave them such a prominence in the country, that Congress increased as far as possible the inducements to fit out letters of marque, and in 1814 reduced the legal duties on goods captured by privateers thirty-three and a third per cent., and afterwards withdrew all claim of the government to prizes and their cargoes. Privateersmen had earned all these privileges for themselves by their activity, adroitness, and bravery; they had become the terror of the British commerce, and while England, proud of her naval strength, was blockading our entire coast, they were sweeping down upon her merchantmen in the chops of her own channels. The names of many of these vessels were very characteristic of the American sailor. "Catch me if you can," "True blooded Yankee," "Right of Search," "Bunker Hill," "Viper," "Rattlesnake," "Scourge," "Spit Fire," and "Teazer," exhibited not only the spirit that animated the commanders, but were well calculated to irritate and enrage the officers of English vessels of war, especially as their conduct corresponded so well with the titles they bore. In September, about three months after the war was declared, the "Nonsuch" privateer, of Baltimore, carrying only twelve pound carronades and eighty or ninety men, while cruising off Cape Vincent, fell in with an English ship carrying sixteen 18 and 24 pound carronades and two hundred men, and a schooner with six four pounders and 60 men. Notwithstanding this overwhelming disparity of force, the privateer determined to uphold the name she bore, and setting American colors bore gallantly down on the ship. Ranging up within close musket shot, she poured in her broadsides and volleys of musketry for three hours and a half, and maintained the unequal contest till her guns were all disabled and only musketry could be used. The vessels instead of taking advantage of the crippled condition of the ship, to capture her, were so amazed at her audacity and the desperate manner in which she was fought, that they turned and fled. The Nonsuch lost twenty-three killed and wounded in this engagement.