In the occasional absence of the British armed vessels appointed for the protection of these ports, the more enterprising and spirited among their citizens frequently fitted out their own cruisers, drawing them, for this purpose, from the merchant service; manning them in person, and requiting themselves for their losses of merchandise by the occasional capture of some richly laden galleon from New Spain.

No doubt the imagination of young Marion was fired by hearing of these exploits.
The sensation produced in the community, by the injuries done to its commerce, in all probability gave the direction to his already excited and restless disposition.

It does not appear, however, that Marion's first and only voyage was made in an armed vessel.

Such, we may well suppose, would have been his desire; but the period when he set forth to procure service upon the seas, may not have been auspicious.

He may have reached the seaport a moment too soon or too late, and the opportunities of this kind were necessarily infrequent in a small and frontier city, whose commerce lay mostly in the hands of strangers.