The rise and decline of piracy in the Atlantic has been used to gauge the increasing commercial, naval and diplomatic control that Great Britain exercised in the Atlantic World in the early modern era. Indeed, naval historians have suggested that by the mid-eighteenth century, naval, imperial and colonial officials had effectively eradicated piracy in the North Atlantic, thanks to effective policing of the high seas and New World coastlines. Statistical data and anecdotal evidence indicate that, even in peacetime, transporting cargoes in the Atlantic remained risky well into the nineteenth century. These data suggest that Great Britain's constabulary command of the region was not nearly as thorough as some have suggested. Moreover, rather than confronting pirates, British officials dealt with the problem of piracy in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through accommodation and negotiation. The key factors in the suppression of pirate fleets were logistical and administrative in nature, rather than tactical. Piracy was eventually ushered out of the Atlantic indirectly, by eliminating its markets through more effective customs enforcement at port, rather than through direct confrontation on the high seas.