614
THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE NAVIES.
splendid vessels as they had been in their day, were now as obsolete asthe galleys of Themistocles . It was in placing a false reliance npon thesevessels that the Government was at fault: it should have recognized in thecourse of twenty years that their day was gone forever, that they were of nomore use than if they did not exist, that they would only be the slaughter-houses of their gallant crews in an encounter with a modern antagonist;and it should by that time have replaced every one of them by war-ships ofthe period.
At the beginning of President Lincoln’s administration, out of the fortyvessels composing the steam-fleet, one, the Michigan , was stationed on thelakes, and five were from one cause or another unserviceable. The remain-ing thirty-four, which comprised the whole of the effective force, were in thescattered situation that is usual in time of profound peace. Nine were laidup in ordinary, and with the traditional methods prevailing at the NavyDepartment, it would have taken some months to fit them out for sea. Noorders had been issued for the general recall of the seventeen ships on foreignservice, an operation requiring considerable time in those days, when nosubmarine cable existed. In the Home Squadron there were seven steamers,two of which, the sloop-of-war Brooklyn and the small steamer Wyandotte , wereat Pensacola; two others, the gun-boats Mohawk and Crusader , were at NewYork ; the Pawnee, a second-class sloop, was at Washington; and the Pow-hatan, a side-wheeler of 1850, was on her way home from Yera Cruz incompany with the gun-boat Pocahontas . Five sailing ships were alsoattached to this squadron,—the frigate Sabine and the sloop St. Louis , atPensacola ; the sloops Cumberland and Macedonian , at Vera Cruz or return-ing thence, and the store-ship Supply , at New York . These twelve vessels,together with the Anacostia, a small screw-tender, at the Washington Navy
Yard, were all that couldbe said to be at the im-mediate disposal of theAdministration.
When the vessels abroadwere gathered in, andthose in ordinary werefitted out, the Govern-ment had a little squad-ron of about 30 steamers,of which the most im-portant were 5 screw-frigates (the sixth, theMerrimac, having been
6 sloops of
AND AFTER CONVERSION INTO AN IRON-CLAD.