The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British, and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the harbor.

Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged, seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes.
Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder.

The records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants.
The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the nation unspeakable.

And yet the least complaint came from those who suffered most.

The New England seaport towns were filled with idle seamen, their harbors with pinks, schooners, and brigs, lying lazily at anchor.
The sailors, with the philosophy of men long accustomed to submit themselves to nature's moods and the vagaries of breezes, cursed British and French impartially, and joined in the general depression and idleness of the towns and counties dependent on their activity.
It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun; though, curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians.