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Updated: June 1, 2025
The only gun-boat that could be brought to bear upon the enemy was already disabled, and the consequences might have been disastrous but for the gallant conduct of the soldiers, who leaped from the sternmost boats, up to their necks, carrying their muskets high overhead, and charged the enemy on landing, causing them to retreat with precipitation behind their entrenchment.
We do not say that the captain of the gun-boat professed to hold that motto, for he was not a boaster, but it was clearly written in the fire of his eye, and stamped upon the bridge of his nose!
He was followed, of course, by his male companions, who were nearly as much interested in the matter as himself. They were soon on the deck of the gun-boat. It was a neat trim screw-steamer of small size, 180 tons burthen, and manned by about sixty Malays and a few Englishmen. Everything on board was as bright and orderly as if it had been a British man-of-war.
And when Fort Sumter was about to fall, and when a single shot-proof gun-boat could have defied the rebel batteries, and without the loss of a man have conveyed to the fortress stores for six months and a whole battalion of troops, that single gun-boat, a mere gun-boat, which need not have passed within one thousand yards of any batteries on her way, could not be commanded by the Government, and the gallant Anderson was compelled to lower to treason that flag whose fall has aroused the nation to arms.
The gun-boat saw and sought to evade her, put on full steam and hugged the Turkish shore, where some hundreds of Circassian riflemen kept up an incessant fire on the Russian boat. It was hit, and its commander wounded, but the crew and the second in command resolved to carry out the attack.
But on Lake Ontario the British fleet was inferior to that of the American, the American Captain Perry had almost established himself on Lake Erie, and on Lake Champlain the British had not a single vessel larger than a gun-boat, and very few of them.
This state of lawlessness went on for three days, and then we made our first appearance in the form of a gun-boat that fired three rounds from one of her guns, "Not to hit something, but to make a salaam." The barricaded ones felt more comfortable.
We had some supper, consisting of eggs and bacon; and at nine o'clock, it being then pitch dark, the pilot informed us it was time to start. I must say I should have been more comfortable if I had been on the bridge of my little craft, just starting over the bar at Wilmington, with the probability of a broadside from a gun-boat saluting us in a very short time, than where I was.
This guerrilla's brother was formerly the captain of the band, but he was killed by a party of rebels, just as he was about to hang a couple of Union prisoners he had taken gun-boat men, I believe. His name is Thorne, and what's the matter, captain?"
By Rush-Bagot Agreement, the naval force of each Government was limited to one small gun-boat of each power on Champlain and Ontario, and two on the upper lakes, an arrangement of immense value to both Canada and the United States. The old-time commercial antagonism was also destined to disappear in a few years after the close of the war.
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