At "four" the red ensign came fluttering down and the mail packet was a prize of war.
Another merchant seaman of this muster-roll of patriots was Silas Talbot, who took to salt water as a cabin boy at the age of twelve and was a prosperous shipmaster at twenty-one with savings invested in a house of his own in Providence.

Enlisting under Washington, he was made a captain of infantry and was soon promoted, but he was restless ashore and glad to obtain an odd assignment.

As Colonel Talbot he selected sixty infantry volunteers, most of them seamen by trade, and led them aboard the small sloop Argo in May, 1779, to punish the New York Tories who were equipping privateers against their own countrymen and working great mischief in Long Island Sound.

So serious was the situation that General Gates found it almost impossible to obtain food supplies for the northern department of the Continental army.
Silas Talbot and his nautical infantrymen promptly fell in with the New York privateer Lively, a fair match for him, and as promptly sent her into port.

He then ran offshore and picked up and carried into Boston two English privateers headed for New York with large cargoes of merchandise from the West Indies.