The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-14 00:00:00

OUR BALTIC FLEET.

Fon effective purposes our fleet has now been up the
Baltic more than two months, and as yet our tri-
umphs are summed up in a few score of wretched
coasters, some sixty-odd infernal machines, the
honour of having had a shot or two fired at us here
and there, and a boat's crew massacred at Hango.
These are the substantial results of a two months'
undisputed sway over the waters of the Baltic, from
Cronstatlt to Copenhagen.
The fleet left the Downs on the 9th of April for
Wing() Sound and Kid, and after a protracted stay
at these places, owing to the lateness of the ice up
the Baltic, on the 3rd of May left Kiel for Faro, and
from thence, on the Bth, to their old anchorage at
Nargen, off Revel. For sixteen days they lay off
Revel, reconnoitring the place, examining first this
point and then that, and finding out, after all, that
nothing could be done. Towards the end of the
month they steamed up to Cronstadt, made an im-
posing display of force for fourteen days, exercised
the crews and the gunboats, and then suddenly, on
the 14th of June, steamed back to Seskar, some thirty
miles distant, and ar suddenly, on the 20th, re•
turned, once more, accompanied by the French
Admiral and three liners, to their anchorage off
Cronstadt. From that date to the present they have
done as much as they did before, taken a few
wretched coasters, fit only for targets for the
fleet, made some three or four careful "recon-
naissances " of Cronstadt and its defences—which
they have discovered, as every one anticipated, to be
amazingly developed since last year—and nearly
killed one of their own admirals with an infernal
machine. This is but a meagre result after an
absence of three months, during two of which the
enemy's ships have wisely contented themselves with
taking refuge behind sunken piles and granite forts.
But it is not our fleet which should bear the blame.
The men and officers of that fleet are thirsting for an
opportunity to distinguish themselves; but our Go-
vernment., with its half measures and its tardy pre-
perations, is the real cause of these inglorious results.
For a whole year the Admiralty have well known
that gun tied mortar boats are the only vessels which
can successfully combat against the Russian bat-
teries. At first they pooh-poohed at the fact, hut a
mouth's experience last year up the Baltic
convinced them it was true, and nine months,
from September to May, were left to fit out
and prepare a flotilla worthy of the work it
had to perform this year. The nine months have
passed, and find the Russians, not us, fitted out with
a flotilla of steam, gun and mortar boats, with vast
fortifications and intrenclied camps rising up on
every side, with clouds of Cossacks and dense bodies
of troops massed upon every available spot, and
moreover upon every spot which last year was open
to attack.

Upon our side what have we done? We flt out and
send the same fleet we did last year, more or less,
with a batch of a dozen or so of gun-boats, to take a
place difficult by nature, almost impregnable by art,
and rendered trebly so since last year. It is no use
bewailing lost opportunities : the only way to remedy
the evil would be to grapple with it boldly at once ;
but delay seems to be the curse of this war, from
Balaklava to the Baltic. And we shall have to
endure a second fruitless campaign in the North,
because the Admiralty have throughout neglected
their duties, and the Government have never yet
decided on their policy.
What we had not got in the Baltic with our fleet
last year, and what would be wanted this, was so
plain to the understanding of any man who asked
himself the question, that it seems incredible a
whole fleet of gun and mortar ships is not now
swarming in o every bay and creek on the slams of