296 SHIPMENT OF HORSES TO THE CRIMEA. 
nience and fittings to sailing vessels, and, from the short 
duration of the voyages, caused much less suffering to the 
animals conveyed by them, but remarked, ee if the noble 
earl imagined that the government could command the ser- 
vices of as many steam transports as they chose for sending 
out the animals required for the army, he was labouring 
under a serious delusion, from which his mind must be 
disabused.” 
It is asserted by all military authorities that the horses 
and men, with accoutrements, &c., must be shipped in the 
same vessel. I have no knowledge of military matters; but 
I have not heard any argument adduced that is so conclusive 
as to make it imperative that it must be so. In a letter 
which I received from an officer of the 17th Lancers, on 
board the c Pride of the Ocean/ when going to the East, last 
year, he says, “ When it began to blow, the confusion and 
destruction were awful, the horses struggling and plunging, 
many of them down ; the soldiers all sick, and not one of 
them well enough to assist them in their forlorn condition ; 
six of the horses were killed, and consigned to the deep next 
morning.” Now, had these horses belonged to me, I should 
have thought it far more profitable to have had one Hull 
groom on such an occasion than all the sick soldiers of the 
17th Lancers. Although it is evident that a great amount 
of mischief might be avoided by sending horses to the Land’s 
End per rail, instead of shipping them at Woolwich, and 
which consists in no less than the saving of a month more or 
less at sea to horses that have to get to the Crimea, yet we 
find in The 'limes of Tuesday, the 20th of March, “ That 110 
non-commissioned officers and gunners of the Royal Artil- 
lery embarked, yesterday, with 100 horses, at Woolwich, for 
a passage in the London and Hackbut transports for the 
Crimea, and that the total number of transports taken up by 
government for the conveyance of cavalry to the Crimea is 
21, with a measurement of 14,700 tons, which are all to be 
ready to embark in 21 days from this date.” I am old 
enough to recollect that in the last Peninsular war a consi- 
derable number of horses were rendered useless from their 
having fever in the feet when landed, and Professor Coleman, 
the principal veterinary surgeon to the army, in a report he 
was called upon to make as to the cause of this serious dis- 
order, stated that it arose from the horses being kept so long 
a time on their legs on board our ships, and he recommended 
that the horses should, in future, be shipped upon ballast 
instead of boards, and that their shoes should be taken off, 
so as to allow their soles to receive support from the sand or 
