The effect of the piracies upon American commerce can be traced in the annual reports of exports and imports. Thus the exports of American products to the Spanish West Indies amounted to $3,606,588 in the fiscal year 1816-1817, while American exports of foreign goods to the same ports reached the sum of $3,477,511. The corresponding figures for 1819-1820 were $3,439,365 of American products and $2,545,717 of American exports of foreign goods. American tonnage fell off, also, of course. The common saying that there is no friendship in business is untrue. American commerce and the use of American ships were increasing in that period at an astonishing rate in all other trades, but Spanish resentment produced a "boycott" that is shown by the official returns.
But this boycott was the mildest form of expression of Spanish resentment. Within a short time after the American-owned cruisers under the Spanish-American flags began ravaging Spanish commerce, the Spaniards retaliated by making reprisals after the fashion common in the sixteenth century. Encouraged by the island authorities, the ship-owners of Cuba fitted out armed vessels to prey upon American commerce. The Cuban pirates were in no case commissioned, but the Porto Rico authorities gave commissions to half a dozen or more. The Cuban pirates, however, worked openly. Regla, a village on the east side of Havana Bay, was the chief pirate port. In November, 1821, eleven Spanish pirate vessels were cruising between Cape Maisi and Santiago, five were working as a squadron at Cape San Antonio, and at least five more were cruising on the north coast east of Matanzas. Between Havana and Matanzas was a flotilla of small boats the crews of which kept constant watch for vessels becalmed in the offing. All such vessels were attacked as soon as night came. Another gang of small-boat pirates operated at Cape Cruz, where they lived in the caves for which the region is noted.
The extent of the depredations of these pirates was never completely known, of course, but in _Niles's Register_ of May 24, 1823, it is stated that 3002 piratical assaults had been committed upon merchant ships in the West Indies since the War of 1812. The "Naval Affairs" volumes of the American State Papers contain many accounts of such assaults, and it appears from these that the pirates not infrequently tortured captured sailors. In March, 1823, the captain and two men of the brig _Alert_, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, were killed in the mouth of Havana harbor. The captain of the brig _Bellisaurius_, captured near Cape San Antonio, had his arms cut off, after which he was placed on a bed of oakum and burned to death.