CHAPTER XXVII 



AS ATTACHE AND BEAEEE OF DESPATCHES 

 IN WAK-TIME 1855 



THE spring of 1855 was made interesting by the ar 

 rival of the blockading fleet before the mouth of the 

 Neva, and shortly afterward I went down to look at it. 

 It was a most imposing sight : long lines of mighty three- 

 deckers of the old pattern, British and French, one hun 

 dred in all, stretched across the Gulf of Finland in front 

 of the fortresses of Cronstadt. Behind the fortresses lay 

 the Russian fleet, helpless and abject; and yet, as events 

 showed during our own Civil War half a dozen years 

 later, a very slight degree of inventive ability would have 

 enabled the Russians to annihilate the hostile fleet, and to 

 gain the most prodigious naval victory of modern times. 

 Had they simply taken one or two of their own great 

 ships to the Baird iron-works hard by, and plated them 

 with railway iron, of which there was plenty, they could 

 have paralleled the destruction of our old wooden frigates 

 at Norfolk by the Merrimac, but on a vastly greater 

 scale. Yet this simple expedient occurred to no one ; and 

 the allied fleet, under Sir Richard Dundas, bade defiance 

 to the Russian power during the whole summer. 



The Russians looked more philosophically upon the 

 blockade than upon their reverses in the Crimea, but they 

 acted much like the small boy who takes revenge on the 

 big boy by making faces at him. Some of their carica 

 tures on their enemies were very clever. Fortunately for 

 such artistic efforts, the British had given them a fine 



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