Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited--wild
stretches of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a
lighthouse or lifesaving station. In the Revolution, when the
British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg,
the safest of the inlets, was used for evading the blockade.
Vessels entered there and sailed up the Mullica River to the head
of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons. To
conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, the
privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and
thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers
prowling along the shore.
Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the
inlets and channels developed a romantic class of gentlemen, as
handy with musket and cutlass as with helm and sheet, fond of
easy, exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown. They
would start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under
legal letters of marque in the wars. But the step was a short one
to a traffic still more profitable; and for a hundred years
Jersey customs officers are said to have issued documents which
were ostensibly letters of marque but which really abetted a
piratical cruise.
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