The Spanish flag continued to cover American slave-traders. The rapid rise of privateering during the war was not caused solely by patriotic motives; for many armed ships fitted out in the United States obtained a thin Spanish disguise at Havana, and transported thousands of slaves to Brazil and the West Indies. Sometimes all disguise was thrown aside, and the American flag appeared on the slave coast, as in the cases of the "Paz,"[75] the "Rebecca," the "Rosa"[76] (formerly the privateer "Commodore Perry"), the "Dorset" of Baltimore,[77] and the "Saucy Jack."[78] Governor McCarthy of Sierra Leone wrote, in 1817: "The slave trade is carried on most vigorously by the Spaniards, Portuguese, Americans and French. I have had it affirmed from several quarters, and do believe it to be a fact, that there is a greater number of vessels employed in that traffic than at any former period."[79] 62. ~Apathy of the Federal Government.~ The United States cruisers succeeded now and then in capturing a slaver, like the "Eugene," which was taken when within four miles of the New Orleans bar.[80] President Madison again, in 1816, urged Congress to act on account of the "violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are chargeable on unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under foreign flags, and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of slaves into the United States, through adjoining ports and territories."[81] The executive was continually in receipt of ample evidence of this illicit trade and of the helplessness of officers of the law. In 1817 it was reported to the Secretary of the Navy that most of the goods carried to Galveston were brought into the United States; "the more valuable, and the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward, where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and persons have gone from New-Orleans to purchase them. Every exertion will be made to intercept them, but I have little hopes of success."[82] Similar letters from naval officers and collectors showed that a system of slave piracy had arisen since the war, and that at Galveston there was an establishment of organized brigands, who did not go to the trouble of sailing to Africa for their slaves, but simply captured slavers and sold their cargoes into the United States. This Galveston nest had, in 1817, eleven armed vessels to prosecute the work, and "the most shameful violations of the slave act, as well as our revenue laws, continue to be practised."[83] Cargoes of as many as three hundred slaves were arriving in Texas. All this took place under Aury, the buccaneer governor; and when he removed to Amelia Island in 1817 with the McGregor raid, the illicit traffic in slaves, which had been going on there for years,[84] took an impulse that brought it even to the somewhat deaf ears of Collector Bullock.