Author: Wilfred Harold Munro

Publisher:

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 58

ISBN-13: 9781332159604

Excerpt from The Most Successful American Privateer: An Episode of the War of 1812 In 1680, four years after the death of the Indian "King Philip" the lands of the conquered sachem were by grant of the English king, Charles II, conferred upon his colony of Plymouth. In that year a town was founded to which the name Bristol was given. For one hundred and fifty years after its foundation this town carried on a commerce that was entirely disproportionate to its size. It was a very important commercial center in the days when a large proportion of the commerce of the American colonies and states was carried on by the vessels that hailed from Narragansett Bay. Its commerce was at first mainly with the West India islands. Then a brisk trade was built up with the "Coast of Africa" - a trade that was especially profitable in the early years of the nineteenth century. In 1804 the first cargo was imported from China. A profitable business with the "Northwest Coast" naturally followed. The year 1812 saw the town at the zenith of its commercial prosperity. It could then have numbered not more than 2,800 people, of whom 2,600 were white. (The blacks for many years constituted from six to seven per cent of the population, possibly because of the voyages to Africa.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.