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The United States, Darling of the Baltictrading with the Continent." In the spring this unfortunateJonah of a captain witnessed the bankruptcy of Messrs. LeMesurier and Company, the London house which handled thefunds of the Massachusetts merchants wh o employed him. 7In 1811, most British merchants withdrew from the licensetrade, and only 7,602 licenses were issued, less than half theprevious year's total. This diminishment was especially apparentin the category of licenses issued for export to the Baltic.Gorged with the Baltic's products, fearful of confiscation ofwhatever cargoes they might send out, and discouraged by thesinking prices of colonial produce in Sweden and Russia, mostBritish merchants avoided that sea's cold waters. In August of1811, Captain John March , one of the Americans languishingin Gothenburg, wrote hom e that the quantity of colonial producesent by England into the Baltic was "I suppose not morethan one-third what was last year." 8 This constriction of herexport commerce in 1811 brought Great Britain closer to defeatthan she would be again until the days of the Kaiser's U ­boats.France's annexation of many of the little states whose flagswere utilized by smugglers for cover severely limited the Eng ­lish merchants in their choice of disguises. John QuincyAdam s reported to the Secretary of State at the end of the 1811shipping season that "the abolition of the Hamburg, Lubeck,Bremen, Pappenburg and Oldenburgflags has much increasedthe necessity under which the English have found themselvesof resorting to that of the United States to carry their merchandise.. . ." 9 Just how often the English must have soabused the American flag was something Adams never realizeduntil some years later.197