Notwithstanding the dramatic successes, her flag was almost banished from the high seas by the close of the year 1813.
The frigates _Constellation_, _United States_, and _Macedonian_ were hemmed in port by the British blockade; the _Adams_ and the _Constitution_ were laid up for repairs; and the only formidable ships of war which roamed at large were the _President_, the _Essex_, and the _Congress_.

The smaller vessels which had managed to slip seaward and which were of such immense value in destroying British commerce found that the system of convoying merchantmen in fleets of one hundred or two hundred sail had left the ocean almost bare of prizes.

It was the habit of these convoys, however, to scatter as they neared their home ports, every skipper cracking on sail and the devil take the hindmost--a failing which has survived unto this day, and many a wrathful officer of an American cruiser or destroyer in the war against Germany could heartily echo the complaint of Nelson when he was a captain, "behaving as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill, and parting company every day." This was the reason why American naval vessels and privateers left their own coasts and dared to rove in the English Channel, as Paul Jones had done in the _Ranger_ a generation earlier.

It was discovered that enemy merchantmen could be snapped up more easily within sight of their own shores than thousands of miles away.

First to emphasize this fact in the War of 1812 was the naval brig _Argus_, Captain William H.Allen, which made a summer crossing and cruised for a month on end in the Irish Sea and in the chops of the Channel with a gorgeous recompense for her shameless audacity.