It was at this time, too, that the _Annual Register_ recorded as 'a most mortifying reflection' that, with a navy of more than one thousand ships in commission, 'it was not safe for a British vessel to sail without convoy from one part of the English or Irish Channel to another.' Merchants held meetings, insurance corporations and boards of trade memorialized the government on the subject; the shipowners and merchants of Glasgow, in formal resolutions, called the attention of the admiralty to the fact that 'in the short space of twenty-four months above eight hundred vessels have been captured by the power whose maritime strength we have hitherto impolitically held in contempt.' It was, indeed, a real blockade of the British Isles that was effected by these irregular and pigmy vessels manned by the sailors of a nation that the British had long held in high scorn. The historian Henry Adams, without attempting to give any complete list of captures made on the British coasts in 1814, cites these facts: