England began visiting the Florida Keys in the winter to fish for the Havana market. These fishermen engaged in wrecking when the opportunity arose. With the acquisition of Florida by the United States in 1821 and the settlement of Key West in 1822, the New England fishermen-wreckers began moving their homes to Key West. Conflicts quickly developed with the Bahamian wreckers. U.S. Navy ships stopped and boarded Bahamian wreckers to check papers, and arrested two Bahamian captains on suspicion of smuggling slaves. American wreckers became increasingly hostile to Bahamian wreckers, and in 1825 the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring all goods salvaged in U.S. waters to be taken to an American port of entry. This measure created a great inconvenience for the Bahamian wreckers, as they had to take salvaged goods and ships to Key West before they could return home to the Bahamas. Some of them soon moved to Key West and acquired U.S. citizenship. Key West had become a port of entry in 1822. In the same year, the U.S. Navy chose Key West as its base for suppressing piracy in the West Indies. The city quickly developed into Florida's most important port. By the 1830s, Key West accounted for 60% to 90% of imports and exports for the Territory. Most of this traffic was due to the activities of the wreckers. Warehouses for storing salvaged goods, shipyards for repairing damaged ships that had been removed from the reefs and for building vessels to be used in wrecking, and ship chandlers for refitting ships all contributed to the city's prosperity. In the 1820s and 1830s, Indian Key functioned as a secondary center for the wrecking industry in the Keys. Closer to most of the reefs off the keys than Key West, Indian Key enjoyed a brief prosperity before being destroyed in a raid by Seminoles in 1840. Wrecking operations Wrecking in the Florida Keys was conducted from sailing vessels. Numerous vessels would patrol along the Florida Reef looking for wrecks. The wreckers would normally anchor at night in protected anchorages along the Keys, and then sail out in the morning to see if any ships had wrecked during the night. As a result, a ship that ran on the reef during the night might attract a dozen wreckers by the afternoon of the next day. The first wrecking captain to reach a stranded ship became the wreck