THE TERMS OF THE TREATY OF GHENT made possible British re-use of the strategy of offensive and defensive economic warfare in further wars, and memories of the Royal Navy's past commercial and naval blockades and defensive convoys remained alive. The impact of the Royal Navy's blockades of the United States between 1812 and 1815, perhaps reinforced by those of Germany between 1914 and 1919 and in 1939, was such that they were recalled by some into living memory. During a tour of America in 1942, just after the United States' entry into the Second World War, the British Broadcasting Corporation's correspondent, Alistair Cooke, met an insurance broker in Hartford, Connecticut, who told him ‘Of course, some things we won't insure. Nobody in this country will insure any cargo that the British might consider contraband. The British Navy virtually controls the seas, and we can't insure against British capture.’

Hard feelings in some circles had evidently taken so long to diminish that the United States War Department's Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, issued in 1942, mentioned the War of 1812 and cautioned that ‘… there is no time today to fight old wars over again, or bring up old grievances’. But there may be time enough to acknowledge that, for too long, the significance of the Royal Navy's blockades of the United States during the War of 1812 has been seriously under-estimated.