20ti HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

effect : assiduity, however, proved, ere long, completely successful. The fre-quent necessity these self-taught navigators were under of steering as close tothe wind as possible, being, in most of their expeditions, compelled to workfor a considerable distance almost in the direct face of it, naturally producedthe strictest attention to that particular point. The frequent experimentsmade in the first instance, perhaps at hazard, were soon productive of the ac-complishment of their projects and their hopes; so that the Bermudian vesselssoon became almost proverbially distinguished for their superior quality as tosailing, and working in every possible direction, whether from the wind, orlying as close to it as the action of it on the sails would permit.

From the innocent purposes of commerce, the commencement of a war na-turally, as it may be said, converted vessels so peculiarly adapted to those ofprivate hostility, into corsairs. To the great discomfiture and loss of the Frenchas well as the Spanish merchants, the seas which surrounded the valuable pos-sessions of those countries, in that part of the world called the West Indies,were covered with a flotilla of this description; and though the force was in-dividually insignificant, yet it sufficed to cope with, and, generally speaking,to capture the foreign merchant vessels. The depredations they effected wereamong the principal causes of that stretch used by the French nation in par-ticular, for extension of their commercial marine; so that, by arming manyof their merchant ships, till, in some instances, they almost bore thesemblance of ships of the line, they might boldly bid defiance to any foe, ex-cept those which were solely fitted for the purposes of war, and were, at least,entitled to the appellation of frigates.

The marine of Asia experienced about this time a sudden augmentation, notmuch dissimilar to that of America. The Malays, a people whose principal oc-cupation for a series of years had been one continued scene of piracy andplunder, began before the middle of the eighteenth century to display more thanordinary exertions in their favourite avocation. Added to these, Angria, an Indianchieftain, by a long continued course of successful depredations, had raised himselfinto such consequence, that he attacked, and for many years with impunity, theships of all countries whatever, not even sparing those belonging to Britain itself.The vessels, by means of which both he himself, and the people first mentioned,principally carried on their system of indiscriminate plunder, were peculiar intheir form, and to the country where they were used. They were distinguishedby the name of grabs; and though individually of no great force, they became ex-tremely formidable, not merely on account of their numbers, but owing to their

peculiar