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This letter, splendidly engrossed, was enclosed in a golden box of a thousand dollars in value, and was accompanied by numerous presents. The fleet consisted of the steam-frigates Susquehanna and Mississippi and the sloops-of-war Plymouth and Saratoga, being the most imposing armament that had ever entered a Japanese port.
There were to be six steam-frigates of the largest class, six steam-sloops, and six smaller vessels, a precise title for which I do not know. I myself have usually called them by the French name corvette, which has a recognized place in English marine phraseology, and means a sloop-of-war of the smaller class. A transfer of terms accompanying a change of system is apt to be marked by anomalies.
She certainly was; and even at the present time the Fulton the First would cut no insignificant figure if placed alongside our gunboats, floating-batteries, and steam-frigates. It is not easy to get intelligent men to believe in things that savour of the marvellous; yet there seems to be a point past which, if once a man be got, he will go on to believe almost anything, no matter how absurd.
With the help of the sails, and the tug 'Zouave, the ship was now run on the flats which make off from Newport News Point. Here the vessel keeled over as the tide continued to fall, leaving us only two guns which could be fought, those in the stern ports. Two large steam-frigates and a sailing-frigate, towed by tugs, had started up from Hampton Roads to our assistance.
I have been told, that the Danish Government intends to build steam-frigates, and will have nothing more to do with sailing vessels of war. The Danes may be right, or they may be wrong; but what will be the result of any future naval engagement where steam alone, or canvass alone is used, is beyond the intelligence of any living creature.
The Prince of Joinville was adored by the nation, on account of his famous victory over the English fleet under the command of Admiral the Prince of Wales, whose ship, the "Richard Cobden," of 120 guns, was taken by the "Belle-Poule" frigate of 36; on which occasion forty-five other ships of war and 79 steam-frigates struck their colors to about one-fourth the number of the heroic French navy.
No barbette or merely embrasured battery of that day could stand up against the twenty or more heavy guns carried on each broadside by the steam-frigates, if these could get near enough. At New Orleans, even the less numerous pieces of the sloops beat down opposition so long as they remained in front of Fort St.
Is it not now our policy to provide in advance for the contingencies of the future, to obtain the live-oak and cedar frames, the engines, boilers, Paixhan guns for at least one hundred steam-frigates, with coats of mail for some of them, so that, instead of spending years in their construction, launching them when the war is over, and then leaving them to decay, we may, as the crisis approaches, be able in a few months to fit out a fleet which, if not irresistible, shall at least command respect?
The steam-frigates were of too deep draught to be of much use in the shoal waters, to which the nature of the hostilities and the character of the Southern coast confined naval operations.
A fleet accordingly on the 17th of April sailed for that port, off which they anchored on the 20th. The line-of-battle ships could not get close enough to the walls, and a squadron of English and French steam-frigates under Captain Jones, of the Sampson, stood in and delivered their broadsides.
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