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No fault was found with the way in which the expedition was commanded, while both officers and men behaved with the most perfect intrepidity and coolness. Most of the crew of the missing boat escaped with their lives, and were made prisoners. A small squadron, consisting of the Hecla, Valorous, and Odin, under Captain Hall, was sent in to engage the batteries of Bomarsund on the 21st of June.
This establishment at least was irreproachable. A reference to "Men of the Time" showed them that Admiral Hay Denver was a most distinguished officer, who had begun his active career at Bomarsund, and had ended it at Alexandria, having managed between these two episodes to see as much service as any man of his years.
Our fleet was, if possible, still more triumphant, destroying Bomarsund and Sweaborg, in the Baltic, without the Russian ships daring to fire a single gun in their defence, while their Black Sea fleet was even sunk by its own admiral, as the only expedient to save it from capture.
These have given place to the steam-liners that began and closed their brief career at Sebastopol and Bomarsund; and the prize-belt is now borne, among the bruisers of the main, by the mob of iron-clads, infinitely diverse of aspect and some of them shapeless, like the geologic monsters that weltered in the primal deep.
We remained a few days at anchor off that place, when some half of the fleet were detached to the Aland Islands, where an insignificant fort called Bomarsund was to be attacked not by the English and French fleets, who were fit to do any mortal thing, but by an army fetched from France.
On the 5th of August the siege artillery arrived, and on the 8th more troops and marines were landed. The fortifications of Bomarsund lie on the eastern point of the largest of the Aland Islands. The principal fortress commands a semicircular bay on the south, with intricate passages leading to it.
Bomarsund was the first place of importance assailed. It was attacked on the land side by the English artillery and French troops, as well as by the English and French marines, with a brigade of seamen who were landed after a fort which was in their way had been blown to pieces, while thirteen ships of the allied fleet assailed it from the sea.
From this it was argued that the fortifications of Sebastopol would be as easily knocked to pieces; but experience showed that there was a vast difference in the two works. Bomarsund was somewhat of contract work. The sea towers of Sebastopol were as strong as hewn stone scientifically put together could make them. The navy lost only one man killed and one wounded.
A French corps of ten thousand men was at once dispatched to Bomarsund under General Baraguay-d'Hilliers, and the place was speedily reduced. Later in the same year, the great expedition to the Crimea was executed; and with reference to it the following facts are mentioned, in order to give an idea of its magnitude:
A part of the famous fortress of Bomarsund, destroyed by an Anglo-French fleet in 1854, may also be seen not far from Mariehamm. Plain but decent fare may be obtained here, but the fastidious will do well to avoid the smaller villages, where the Alander's diet generally consists solely of seal-meat, salt fish, bread and milk.
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