26 With privateer captains often being able to ‘‘buil fortunes for their own- ers,’’ as well as earn compensation for themselves far in excess of the usual wages paid a merchant vessel master, the city soon came to be infected with what Dr. During King George’s War, New York’s privateers had seventy-nine prize ships condemned resulting in prizes totaling £615,000. Only Rhode Island had a larger privateering fleet. During King George’s War, New York had thirty-five privateers, more than twice the number of privateers sailing from Massachusetts and almost three times the size of Philadelphia’s privateer fleet. In the mid-eighteenth century, New York City was America’s premier privateering port. The presence of numerous privateers in New York harbor during the imperial wars of the mid-eighteenth century greatly assisted slaves in transforming their lives from enslavement to freedom. 25 A significant cause of this economic war boom was New York’s privateering activities.
In comparison to the prewar years, the number of ships clearing New York harbor and the number of seamen on the city’s vessels between 17 increased by almost 400 percent. Coming on the heels of the economic recession of the 1730s, the boom that resulted from the imperial conflicts with Spain in the period from 1739 to 1748 was a complete reversal of fortune for New York’s merchants holding reduced assets and an expansion of opportunities for slaves desiring freedom. 24 The imperial wars of the mid-eighteenth century resulted in a significant expansion in the American colonial maritime industry, and nowhere more so than in New York. This increase was due to annual slave imports into New York increasing by almost 60 percent from approximately 125 annually in the first half of the 1720s to an annual rate of 198 slaves between 17. a significant gender imbalance among the city’s slaves during the 1720s, New York’s slave population increased from 1,362 in 1723 to 1,719 in 1737.