During these years several bold American cruisers had made the stars and stripes a familiar sight in European waters. The most famous of these cruisers, Paul Jones, made his name a terror upon the coasts of England, burned the ships in a port of Cumberland, sailed into the Frith of Forth and threatened Edinburgh, and finally captured two British war vessels off Flamborough Head, in one of the most desperate sea-fights on record. [Sidenote: St. Eustatius, Feb., 1781.] Paul Jones was a regularly commissioned captain in the American navy, but because the British did not recognize Congress as a legal body they called him a pirate. When he took his prizes into a port in Holland, they requested the Dutch government to surrender him into their hands, as if he were a mere criminal to be tried at the Old Bailey. But the Dutch let him stay in port ten weeks and then depart in peace. This caused much irritation, and as there was also perpetual quarrelling over the plunder of Dutch ships by British cruisers, the two nations went to war in December, 1780. One of England's reasons for entering into this war was the desire to capture the little Dutch island of St. Eustatius in the West Indies. An immense trade was carried on there between Holland and the United States, and it was believed that the stoppage of this trade would be a staggering blow to the Americans. It was captured in February, 1781, by Admiral Rodney, private property was seized to the amount of more than twenty million dollars, and the inhabitants were treated with shameful brutality. [Sidenote: How the Americans were weakened and hampered. The want of union.]