At Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war.

A lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up.
Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen, born within sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries, able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship.

They were fighting sailors, too, though serving only in the merchant marine.

In those days the men that went down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight other antagonists than Neptune and AEolus.

All the ships went armed.