The gallant fight and the ultimate loss stand for much good fighting without profit in the work of our private armed ships during the War of 1812. Our histories, almost without exception, have overstated the success of the privateers and their influence upon the course of the war. A few of these ships--a very few--made enormous profits; the others made insignificant gains or actual losses. Our histories laud the work of the few that really succeeded; they ignore all that failed, save only as the reader is left to infer that all, or nearly all, did well. Thus the fact that the _Rossie_, of Baltimore, Captain Joshua Barney, in a single cruise, captured vessels supposed to be worth more than $1,500,000 is told in every history; the equally well-authenticated fact that Barney's share of the plunder amounted to only $1000 (see Mary Barney's _Memoir_), because the much-vaunted prizes were either destroyed at sea, or were sold for little or nothing in port,--this fact is deliberately omitted. In the matter of net gains the _Rossie_ stands as a type of the successful privateers, with a few exceptions. On November 23, 1812, less than six months after war was declared, and while the successful privateers were securing the best of their prizes, the privateer owners of Boston, New York, and Norfolk united in a petition to Congress, begging help through legislation because captured goods sold for such low prices that no profit was made by even the successful privateers. The captured ships, it was said, could not be sold at any price, even when fit for use as privateers. In short, "the profits of private naval warfare are by no means equivalent to the hazard." (Rep. Com. Ways and Means, December 12, p. 3.) In Guernsey's _New York City During the War of 1812_ is a list of the privateers sailing from that city--120 in all. Of these, 57 took not one prize. It is to be presumed that 21 of them made some money, because they took at least 5 prizes, while 7 took at least 15, and it may be supposed that they did well. But when it is remembered that in those days a ship commonly paid for herself in one voyage in ordinary trade, it cannot be said that privateering was of any special benefit except to three or four that took many prizes.