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1803-s] British blockades and Admiralty decisions. 327 sailors' rights 11 which ended, nine years later, in her second war with Great Britain. The United States was once more a neutral power ; and her merchants began to trade with Europe and with the West Indies, as during the later war, by means of the " broken voyage." In two years 1 time almost the whole carrying trade of Europe was in American hands. The merchant flag of every belligerent save Great Britain almost dis- appeared from the sea. France and Holland ceased to trade under their own flags. Spain for a time carried her specie and her bullion in hei own ships, protected by her men-of-war; but this practice was soon abandoned, and before 1806 the dollars of Mexico were brought to her shores in American vessels. It was under the Stars and Stripes that the gum trade went on with Senegal, that ingots and dollars were exported from Vera Cruz and La Plata, that hides were carried from South America, and sugar from the ports of Cuba. From Cadiz, from Barcelona, from Lisbon, from Emden and Hamburg, Goteborg and Copenhagen, from the ports of Cayenne and Dutch Guiana, from Batavia and Manila, fleets of American merchantmen sailed to the United States, there to break the voyage and then go on to Europe. But this great trade was now doomed to destruction. It was attacked in two ways by paper blockades and Admiralty decisions. In January, 1804, Great Britain blockaded the ports of Guadaloupe and Martinique ; in April she closed the port of Cura9oa ; and in August she extended her blockade to the Straits of Dover and the English Channel. In May, 1805, came a blow from the Lords Commissioners of Appeal in Prize Cases. A ship named the Essex had taken on board a cargo at Barcelona in Spain and landed it at Salem in Massachusetts, had paid duties, and, after undergoing repairs, had cleared, laden with the same cargo, for Havana. This was the legal " broken " voyage. But on her way to Cuba the Essex was seized, sent in for examination and con- demned. The court now looked into the intention of the claimants, declared that the cargo had never been intended for sale in the markets of the United States, but had been exported from Spain for sale in Cuba, and that the voyage was therefore, in effect, direct. They accordingly condemned the ship and cargo; and the Lords Commissioners sustained the ruling. It was July, 1805, when the final decision was made in London, and September when the news reached the United States. It threw the commercial world into a flurry of excitement. Insurance companies, chambers of commerce, mass-meetings of merchants in all the large seaports, called on Congress to retaliate ; and in April, 1806, the first of a long series of retaliatory measures was signed by the President. The Non-importation Act of 1806, as it was called, forbade the importation from Great Britain or her dependencies of a long list of goods. The Act came into force on November 15, but six weeks later it was sus- pended.