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Among the German ships which were separated from the main fleet in the North Sea, and which were left without direct communication with the German admiralty after the cutting of the cables off the Azores by the Drake, were the cruisers Goeben and Breslau. When England declared war these two German ships were off the coast of Algeria.
Then the talk veered round toward naval matters, and my kind hostess afforded me the opportunity to parade my special knowledge by asking me to explain the difference between armoured and protected cruisers, one question leading to another, until at length His Excellency, who had been listening most courteously and attentively, said: "Am I mistaken, sir, in supposing that you are an officer in the honourable Navy of Great Britain?"
Three armored cruisers were in the northern port, and 7 battleships in the other; and all Russia's efforts after war broke out were vainly directed toward remedying this faulty disposition before it began.
The inevitable consequence is, that more misery is now inflicted on Africa by the criminals, gently called Slave-traders, of these two guilty nations, than if there were no treaties for the abolition of the traffic. The number required is always carried over, and hence, as many perish by a miserable death in escaping from the cruisers, as reach their destination.
"Daylight fishing ain't much good just now; we take twice as many at night." "No trouble with the Frenchies?" "Lord bless you I ain't seen a French sail for months. Our cruisers are too sharp for them; though they say a good many privateers run in and out of their ports in spite of all we can do, and a lot of our ships get snapped up. But we don't trouble about them.
It was true that the States kept many cruisers off the coasts and upon the rivers, but these were to protect their own citizens and friendly traders against pirates and against the common foe. Germany derived as much benefit from this system as did the Provinces themselves.
On the coasts and on the ocean the war has been as successful as circumstances inseparable from its early stages could promise. Our public ships and private cruisers, by their activity, and, where there was occasion, by their intrepidity, have made the enemy sensible of the difference between a reciprocity of captures and the long confinement of them to their side.
They wanted their money, and they wanted it by the first steamer which could be got ready to sail. They weren't going to wait until they got one of their cruisers over to England, not they! "The quickest way, of course, would have been to ship it to Aspinwall, and then take it by rail to Panama, and from there ship it to Lima, but I suppose they were afraid to do that.
If those two battleships and two cruisers could still be retained for China, they would live to fight another day, for with the addition of the southern squadron, still intact and undamaged, they would once more make up a powerful fleet; but if they were lost or captured now, that would be the end of them, and possibly the end of China also.
Finally, those islands dotted over a thousand miles of sea presented a labyrinth wherein it would be easy for the French to elude Nelson's cruisers. On the other hand, it may be urged that the success of the plan depended on too many ifs.
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