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The Federal navy is too utterly inefficient now, save for attack and defense along its own shores, to give cause for apprehension even to a second-class Power: it cannot even protect Northern commerce. For a year or more, the Florida and Alabama have laughed at the beards of all the cruisers, and carry on depredation still with a high hand.
All along the routes to India and the East the same thing was happening, and not a day passed but saw desperate races between fleet ocean greyhounds and hostile cruisers, which, as a rule, terminated in favour of the former, thanks to the superiority of private enterprise over Government contract-work in turning out ships and engines. In Britain the excitement was indescribable.
It will thus be seen that these turret-ships are practically stronger in defensive equipment than any other class of ironclad cruisers. The battery of these vessels is surrounded by a breastwork six feet in height, plated with nine-inch armour. Entrance is gained to the turrets themselves from inside this breastwork.
Japan had quite a number of these, all over a hundred tons, one or two being even over two hundred; and they were, of course, much faster and more heavily armed than the Chinese torpedo-boats. Japan also possessed an advantage in that her cruisers were not only larger than those of China, they were also newer, faster, and more heavily armed; and there were more of them.
They know that Spain, Sardinia, and almost all the Catholic powers in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Levant, are at perpetual war with those Mahometans; that while Algiers, Tunis, and Sallee, maintain armed cruisers at sea, those Christian powers will not run the risque of trading in their own bottoms, but rather employ as carriers the maritime nations, who are at peace with the infidels.
There was a class of them which exemplified the rapid development of the merchant marine in a conspicuous manner large commerce destroyers too swift to be caught, too powerful to fear the smaller cruisers. They were extremely profitable business ventures, entrusted to the command of the most audacious and skillful masters that could be engaged.
About forty people on board, and eleven Negro Slaves, but little in the way of European goods save some Iron and Cloth. They had a passenger of note on board, one Don Pantaleone and Something as long as my Arm, who was going to be Governor of Baldivia, and said he had been taken not long since in the North Sea by Jamaica Cruisers.
The second line was composed of the armoured cruisers, Duke of Edinburgh, Black Prince, Henry the Fourth, Warwick, Edward the Third, Cromwell, all of over thirteen thousand tons, and twenty-two knots speed; the Drake, King Alfred, Leviathan and Good Hope, of over fourteen thousand tons and twenty-four knots speed; and the reconstructed Powerful, and Terrible, of fourteen thousand tons and twenty-two knots.
Ever since our merchant marine was driven from the sea by the rebel cruisers during the War of the Rebellion the United States has been paying an enormous annual tribute to foreign countries in the shape of freight and passage moneys. Our grain and meats have been taken at our own docks and our large imports there laid down by foreign shipmasters.
He blew up his ship and by a combination of pluck, good seamanship, and a favorable fortune managed to elude the cordon of British cruisers, reaching the German shore with his prisoners. The total crew of the Ramsay was slightly more than 100 men.
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