FLOATING DEFENCE. 
485 
from an interesting letter of Captain Robert Hall, R.N., to Lord 
Cochrane 1 serve to illustrate a phase of national imbecility which it is 
to be hoped will never recur:— 
“ I am serving here in an amphibious way— having the rank of brigadier to 
command an * army flotilla ! ’ but why it should be an ‘ army 5 one I cannot find 
out.There is an immense naval establishment here of a hundred 
and forty vessels of different discretions quite independent of the Admiral! 
These are maintained by the British Government at an expense of about £140,000 
per annum.The island of Zante has another flotilla of 60,000 
dollars to protect it, and the Commandant of the barren rock of Lissa—not con¬ 
tent with his gun-boats—sent in the other day a serious memorial, stating the 
necessity of defending his island by placing gun-boats all round it , wherever there 
were no guns on shore ! If this flotilla mania should reach our West India islands, 
what will be the consequences? At least, I should think, as army matters are con¬ 
ducted, an expense equal to one half that of the whole navy .... Figure 
to yourself' eighteen subalterns of different regiments commanding divisions of this 
flotilla! When I took it out to sea, they were all sea-sick and . . . about 
the decks.The army officers appointed to command one of our 
vessels mislaid what he called the ‘route given him by the Quartermaster-General/ 
‘lost his way,’ as he expressed it, and got ashore in the Gulf of Squillace. On 
his exchange, he reported to me that ‘ the night was so dark he could not see the 
rock on which the vessel ran ! ’ and that when fast a board broke in her bottom , so 
that the water ran in so fast he could not scoop it out again. 5 Thus it is that Mr. 
Bull is humbugged. 55 
What could better illustrate the folly of soldiers seeking to play at 
being sailors, or the extent to which the floating defence mania may be 
carried. 
At Sebastopol, sunken defence prevailed, and there was no oppor¬ 
tunity for the employment either of floating batteries or light craft. 
While the history of war, down to the age of steam, affords many 
instances of a resort to floating defence, they were usually due rather 
to chance than to deliberate design, and nothing* approaching to system 
appears to have been evolved, except in the ludicrous cases referred to 
by Captain Hall. Where small craft were present in a port or a river, 
they could, and frequently did, engage any similar craft employed in 
the attack. Where vessels were unable to take the sea they could be 
moored and utilised as floating batteries. Where a nation was reduced 
to fighting in-interior waters, its naval force became in effect floating 
defence. 
In the irregular and wholly uninstructive operations carried on by the 
Allies on the rivers Parana and Paraguay, the Paraguayans having no 
navy were driven to temporary expedients, and the ce gun-flats 33 which 
played a part in the little action of Riachuelo came fairly within the 
definition of floating defence. In the American Civil War, the condi¬ 
tions were similar. Having no navy, the Confederate States were 
restricted to fighting in inland waters with small vessels specially built 
or adapted for the occasion, and by the force of peculiar circumstances 
floating defence approached to system. Thus, at New Orleans and at 
Mobile, small steamer flotillas were held ready to assist in the defence 
of channels. Posted behind a line of batteries, mines or obstructions, 
1 Dated. Messina, 14th January, 1814. 
