If the accounts of gains and losses could be posted ledger fashion, the struck balance would show that while the captured goods[4] were at times almost the only resource of the colonists needing goods of foreign manufacture, and while, too, a few individuals were enriched, the losses of the ship merchants as a class, and of the country, far outweighed the gains. American independence was not won, as so often claimed, by the privateers; it was not even forwarded.
There was a further loss, which, though it cannot be measured, was real. There is abundant evidence to show that the successes of the few made gamblers, and even thieves, of many merchants. While two frigates were on the stocks in Rhode Island, the timber belonging to the government was stolen for use in privateers. Still another evil influence is found in the fact that the magnified stories of privateer work made the people believe that the greed of the merchants would serve to defend the new-born nation from foreign aggression better than a navy could do it. And not until after the War of 1812 was brought upon us was the miserable delusion dispelled.
In two respects only did the privateers serve the American merchant marine well: they gave some thousands of individual seamen increased ability to handle ships under difficult conditions, and they improved the speed of the whole fleet.
Captain Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, was perhaps the first American to make a systematic study of ship models with a view of increasing speed. He established a shipyard near his wharf at Salem; with untrammelled mind he made experiments, and eventually he built 4 ships of from 300 to 360 tons' burden, each of which became noted for strength and speed. One of them (the _Astræ_, a vessel less than 100 feet long), while on her way to the Baltic, made the run from Salem to the Irish coast in eleven days. In 1783 this vessel crossed from Salem to France in 18 days, and she made the passage home in 19.
Only a few ships remained in commission to float the flag of the "new constellation" at the end of the War of the Revolution, but it was a matter of no small significance that these ships were, on the average, far superior to those that had formed the American merchant marine in colonial days. Indeed, they were literally the best merchantmen in the world. And the conditions under which they were to sail, though harrowing to the owners and to all patriotic Americans, were to maintain the standard of the fleet for many years to come.