Twelve hundred of them were killed or made prisoners during the Revolution.

They were to be found in the Army and Navy and behind the guns of privateers.

There were twenty-five Nantucket whalemen in the crew of the Ranger when Paul Jones steered her across the Atlantic on that famous cruise which inspired the old forecastle song that begins 'Tis of the gallant Yankee ship That flew the Stripes and Stars, And the whistling wind from the west nor'west Blew through her pitch pine spars.
With her starboard tacks aboard, my boys, She hung upon the gale.
On an autumn night we raised the light Off the Old Head of Kinsale.
Pitiful as was the situation of Nantucket, with its only industry wiped out and two hundred widows among the eight hundred families left on the island, the aftermath of war seemed almost as ruinous along the whole Atlantic coast.

More ships could be built and there were thousands of adventurous sailors to man them, but where were the markets for the product of the farms and mills and plantations?
The ports of Europe had been so long closed to American shipping that little demand was left for American goods.

To the Government of England the people of the Republic were no longer fellow-countrymen but foreigners.