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Baltimore Clippers American privateers used ships with a distinctive leaning mast that sailed faster than any vessel of the Royal Navy. There privateers inflicted millions of dollars of damage to British shipping, capturing 1,338 vessels. This resulted in the British losing an average of 50 ships a month by the summer of 1814, most of them in British home waters. This exceeded British ship building capacity at the time and could well have brought the British economy to a halt if the war had not ended at the end of that year.
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