The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

The damage to British trade and military victualling was substantial. Insurance premiums on vessels traveling from the West Indies to England at times exceeded 20 percent of the value of the cargo and the ships—higher than during the Seven Years’ War—and were still rising. Lloyd’s of London estimated that in the first two years of war, rebel privateers would capture several times more merchantmen than the Americans lost in vessels of all sorts. A loyalist trader in Nova Scotia who had five ships taken that fall told his diary, “No protection afforded as yet from government.… The people are much engaged in privateering, and very successful.” British merchant captains began painting black squares on their hulls in hopes that simulated gun ports would scare away marauders; the Nelly, seized while sailing from Honduras to London with a cargo of mahogany and turtles, was found to brandish six real guns and twelve made of wood. An Englishman reported from the Caribbean that in one week fourteen British ships were escorted into Martinique as American prizes, some of them straggling West Indiamen culled from sugar convoys despite protection from Royal Navy escorts. “We go on briskly taking prizes,” Abigail Adams told John. “We have a plenty of sugars.”