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Russian forts were seen on Cook's Inlet, Russian settlements on Prince William Sound, Russian flotillas of nine hundred Aleutian hunters steering by instinct like the gulls spreading over the sea as far east as Bering Bay, or where the coast of Alaska dips southward.
Family portraits in frames whose charm of design and colour made atonement for the indifference of the painting, alternated with brown landscapes in which castles, bridges, and impenetrable groves were dimly to be discovered through veils of varnish; flotillas of miniatures had settled, like groups of flies, wherever on the crowded walls foothold could be found, and water-colours, pencil-drawings, and photographs, rilled any remaining space.
Troops to the amount of 160,000, were mustered in camps along the French and Dutch coasts, and vast flotillas, meant to convey them across the Channel, were formed, and constantly manoeuvred in various ports, that of Boulogne being the chief station. The spirit of England, on the other hand, was effectually stirred.
Another party was content with a simple scheme of coast-protection only, and thought this object attained if some important points on the coast were defended by artillery and cheap flotillas of gunboats were stationed at various places. This view was not long maintained. All discerning persons were convinced of the necessity to face and drive back an aggressive rival on the high seas.
From admiral and commodore and captain in the conning-towers to officers and men in barbettes and casemates, and the sweating stokers and engineers in their steel prisons which might well become their tombs every man risked and gave his life as cheerfully as the most reckless commander or seaman on the torpedo flotillas.
The modern steamers are coming, and throw into disorder the flotillas of the past; colliers that leave great eddies in their wake, or perhaps a wearisome lot of those three-decked tourist boats, which make a great noise as they plough the water, and are laden for the most part with ugly women, snobs and imbeciles.
Large flotillas of small but swift patrol boats, squadrons of destroyers, guns mounted forward and aft on merchantmen, dragnets, mine fields, and last but not least aeroplanes, all contributed their share toward the combating of submarine warfare. Just how many submarines have been sunk or captured is not even approximately known.
Before the Assiniboines were ready to depart back up the waterways down which they had come, their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season, other flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs made their entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the Hudson's Bay Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts came in.
Almost from the first the ever-tightening grip of the blockade upon the Southern coasts made its power felt, and early in 1862 the inland waterways of the South were beginning to fall under the command of the Northern flotillas.
To New York, the Sound, and waters as far as Cape Cod, 50. To Boston and the harbors north of Cape Cod, 50. The flotillas assigned to these several stations might each be under the care of a particular commandant, and the vessels composing them would in ordinary be distributed among the harbors within the station in proportion to their importance.
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