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The native Californians, who had never seen a steamship, stood for days on the beach looking at her, with the universal exclamation, "Tan feo!" how ugly! and she was truly ugly when compared with the clean, well-sparred frigates and sloops-of-war that had hitherto been seen on the North Pacific coast.
But, while the larger vessels were thus accomplishing little or nothing, two or three small sloops-of-war, of a class newly built, slipped through the enemy's lines, and, gaining the open sea, fought one or two notable actions.
At a low estimate, our country requires an additional supply of at least six mail-clad steam frigates, twelve steam sloops-of-war, and twelve steam gun-boats, with similar armor.
They continued to send slow-sailing brigs and ill-armed sloops-of-war, for the protection of large fleets of merchantmen, with valuable cargoes, while the frigates of the enemy, in search of them, whether in the calm or in the storm, were faster than British seventy-fours, and were equal to British ships of the line in armament.
During the same year Congress voted to construct six more frigates, twelve sloops-of-war, and six smaller vessels, and appropriated a million for the frames of six ships of the line, two millions for timber, and fifty thousand dollars for two dock-yards.
The appropriations by Congress of late years for steam frigates and sloops-of-war, and for the defence of New York, New Bedford, Portland, Bath, and Bangor, for Bath, in particular, which owns nearly two hundred thousand tons of shipping, and which builds more ships annually than any other port in the Union, Boston excepted, are most judicious; but are there not other points which deserve the attention of Government?
The bands played the time-honored air of The Girl I Left Behind Me, and the men cheered lustily as the ships cleared the bar, while at the mess-tables, says Knox, there was only one toast among the officers "British colors on every French fort, post, and garrison in America." With Saunders went twenty-two ships of the line five frigates and seventeen sloops-of-war, besides the transports.
Letters from the American consul in Buenos Ayres informed Porter that on the 5th of July the British frigate Phoebe, of thirty-six guns, a vessel in every way of superior force to the Essex, had sailed from Rio Janeiro for the Pacific, accompanied by two sloops-of-war, the Cherub and Raccoon, of twenty-four guns each.
But tropical squalls, which gather quickly and sweep down with hurricane force, are another matter; and it was of these the officer quoted spoke, suggesting that possibly such an experience had caused the loss of one of our large, tall-sparred sloops-of-war, the Albany, which in 1854 disappeared in the West Indies.
Farragut made his attack with four monitors, two of them, the Tecumseh and Manhattan, of large size, carrying 15-inch guns, and the other two, the Winnebago and Chickasaw, smaller and lighter, with 11-inch guns, and the wooden vessels, fourteen in number. Seven of these were big sloops-of-war, of the general type of Farragut's own flagship, the Hartford.
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