The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-07 00:00:00

THE N AVAL REINFORCEMENTS FOR

NORM AMERIC.d.

If praise is due to the War Department for their
rapid and energetic action in sending out military
stores and reinforcements for Canada, the same
tribute can unquestionably be claimed by the Ad-
miralty for the rapidity which they have shown in
preparing for the impending struggle, strengthen-
ing our fleet on the North American station, and
bringing forward the vessels that will be fit for ser-
vice on the Lakes of Canada. It is just five weeks
since we laid before our readers a list of the naval
force under the command of Admiral Milne on the
North American and West India stations. That
list comprised five line-of-battle ships, 10 first-class
frigates, and 17 powerfully armed corvettes and
sloops—all steamers, and mounting in all 850 guns.
This fleet is, in fact, equal to the whole Federal
navy,'whether steam or sailing. As we have said,
only five weeks have elapsed since that list was
given, and already the preparations are far ad-
vanced towards reinforcing this fleet with 2 line-of-
battle ships, 23 of the largest, fastest, and heaviest
armed screw frigates, and 8 powerful corvettes,
mounting among them 1,000 guns. Some of these
vessels have sailed and are already on the station,
others are on their way out, others only wait
their sailing orders to start at a moment's notice,
some are in commission and will be ready and off
in a very short time, and only one or two, such as
the Black Prince, though rapidly fitting, are not
sufficiently forward to be commissioned yet. Of the
squadron of frigates, each vessel has been carefully
chosen for its great sailing speed, high steam power,
and heavy armament, and never yet has such a
fleet of picked cruisers been sent out against any
enemy. Among them are the Shannon, 51 guns ;
Leander, 51; Euryalus, 51; Sutlej, 51; Orlando,
51; Severn, 51; Phcebo, 51 ; Warrior, 40; Black
Prince, 40; Galatea, 26 (sister to the formidable
Ariadne) ; Defiance, 22 ; Defence (iron), 22 ; Re-
sistance (iron), 22; Satellite, 21 ; Orpheus, 21 ;
Barossa, 21; Pylades, 21; Rattlesnake, 21;
Chanticleer, 17 ; Greyhound, 17 ; Zebra, 17 ; and
Magicienne, 16. The two line-of-battle ships are
the Hero, 91, and Meeanne, 81. The sloops, very
heavily armed, aro the Styx, 7 ; Stromboli, 7 ; De-
vastation, 7 ; Petrel, 11; Rapid, 11 ; Rosario, 11;
Pandora, 5; and Vigilant, 4. All these ships, like
those already on the station, are screws or paddles,
so that by the beginning of February Admiral
Milne will have at his disposal 65 sail—namely,
seven line-of-battle ships, 33 frigates, and 25 cor-
vettes and sloops. Of the seven line-of-battle ships,
four—the St. George, Conqueror, Donegal, and Hero
—both steam and sail as fast as the best frigates in
the service. With such a force a total and most
effective blockade of all the Federal ports could be
established in a single week ; for, unlike the coast
line of the Conferate States, which is protected by
myriads of little islands and countless inlets and
channels leading to the great rivers beyond, all the
great Federal harbours hive such narrow entrances
that a single vessel would be sufficient to stop all
passage in or out. With the Warrior at Sandy
Hook, what could enter New York, or rather what
effectual resistance could Fort Hamilton and the
batteries on Staten Island offer to a combined at-
tack of the four iron frigates, in case the Govern.
ment wished to force the passage, and dictate their
own terms of.peace by laying the fleet broadside on
to the streets of New York and Hoboken ? That
the Warrior and Black Prince, Resistance and De-
fence, could engage and destroy these batteries
without the smallest risk to themselves, the experi-
ments against the Warrior target have proved con-

elusively. A single vessel at each port closes Bos-
ton and Portland, and two off Cape May would be
ample for the Delaware River and the trade of
Philadelphia. Admiral Milne, we believe, has al-
ready made very complete arrangements as to the
disposition of his squadron, so that in the event of
war the Federal cruisers off the Southern Coast may
be promptly and satisfactorily accounted for.
The worst part of the struggle, however, will not
be on the North Atlantic seaboard, but on the great
:Lakes of Upper Canada and North America. It was
said truly in the last war that whoever was master
of these Lakes would be master of all. The know-
ledge of this may have led to the clause in the
treaty of 1815 by which both Powers agreed to
build no war vessels on the Lakes in time of peace,
and this clause again accounts for the fact that the
New Orleans, 84 guns, commenced in 1814 in
Sackett's harbour, on Lake Ontario, has remained
unfinished to this day. Of course, from this vessel,
left unfinished nearly 50 years ago (though it is to
this hour reckoned in the Federal Navy List as an
effective line-of-battle ship), we have nothing to
fear. It is, however, most important to remember
that the Federals have a navy-yard on Lake Ontario
and that, to avert the ravages of war from Upper
Canada, we must be careful to maintain as absolute
a supremacy on Lakes Erie and Ontario as we shall
do on the American coast from the Bay of Fundy
to the Chesapeake. This, as concerns our success in
the struggle, is a point of vital interest, and we are
glad, therefore, to be able to tell our readers that
this danger has been foreseen and amply provided
against, and that within a week after the breaking
up of the ice in the rivers and canals a whole fleet of
gunboats, with the most powerful of the screw cor-
vettes sent out to Admiral Milne, will carry the pro-
tection of the English flag from Montreal to Detroit.
Between Lake Ontario and Montreal the naviga-
tion of the St. Lawrence is rendered difficult and
somewhat dangerous to vessels coming down the
stream by the rapids of Long Sault, the Cedars,
Cascades, and Lachine, places where there are sud-
den rapids formed by a series of declivities in the
bed of the river, and where the waters rush down,
sometimes for a distance of one or two miles, with a
velocity of from 20 to nearly 25 miles an hour.
Until within the last few years these rapids were
considered too dangerous for any vessel to attempt
to descend them, and, of course, getting up them
again is impossible. To overcome the obstacles
which these currents offered to water communi-
cation by the great highway of the St. Lawrence
to the Lakes above, the Canadian Government,
with British assistance, have formed a series of
canals with innumerable lock-gates above Montreal,
by which the rapids are avoided, and easy commu-
nication obtained with Lakes Ontario, Erie, and
Michigan. The first canal is about two miles long,
through the southern extremity of the island of
Montreal, and this avoids the rapids of Lachine.
The next, in order to avoid the Cascades and Cedar
Rapids, is much longer, and unfortunately it is made
on the right or American bank of the river, and
only some 12 or 15 miles distance from the frontier
itself. This extends from Beauharnais to Hungry
Bay, and is called the Beauharnais Canal. The
next, the Cornwall Canal, extends from Cornwall to
Dickenson's Landing, to avoid the Long Sault.
Beyond this are short detached canals at Ferrand's
Point, the Platte, Iroquois, and Galops Rapids.
After these the navigation is clear through the
Thousand Islands into Lake Ontario. The tall, wide,
three-storied river steamers which ply between On-
tario and Montreal go up these canals every day,
and up these canals, too, the gunboats, sloops, and
corvettes must pass to protect the shores and trade
of Western Canada. They may do so with ease,
since all the locks in these canals are built to pass
vessels 186 feet long, 441 feet beam, and 9 feet
draught. On this important point we can speak
with certainty, as we have an official engineer's plan
with the dimensions of the locks and canals, before
us. All oar smaller 21-gun frigates, such as the
Pylades, Rattlesnake, Barossa, Satellite, &c., could,
we think, with perfect ease pass up these locks if
lightened of their heavy stores and armaments,
which could, of course, be taken up with them on
timber rafts or flat-bottomed country boats. Once
on the waters of Lake Ontario all our difficulties
would be at an end, for at the western extremity of
Lake Ontario is the Welland Canal, connecting
Port Dalhousie, on Lake Ontario, with Port
Colborne, on Lake Erie. The length of this canal
is about 35 miles, and it passes entirely through
British territory. The lock gates on this are cap-
able of passing vessels of 142 feet long, 26 feet
beam, and 10 feet draught—an ample accommo-
dation for the heavy armed six-gun screw
despatch gunboat vessels like the Flying Fish,
or even for the heavy armed 11-gun sloops of the
class to which the Rapid, Petrel, and Rosario be-
long. From Lake Erie the River St. Clair leads
direct, between Detroit, on the American side, and
Chatham, on the Canadian side, into Lake Michi-
gan. Across Lake St. Clair and down the St. Clair
River two-thirds of the corn and provision traffic
between the States of the Far Wrest and the Atlan-
tic seaboard is carried on, and one or two corvettes
on Lake St. Clair would be sufficient to stop it all.
The Grand Trunk Railway has a line to the settle-
ment of Sarnia, on Lake Huron, around the shores
of which grows any quantity of the finest timber,
If shipwrights were employed to build a few gun-
boats at this place (their machinery and armaments
could be forwarded by rail), they could steam at
once, by a passage as wide as the Straits of Dover,
into Lake Michigan, and find not only the enor-
mous traffic of this great lake, but even such towns
as Chicago and Milwaukie, entirely at their mercy.
It may be said, perhaps, that in case of war it is
equally open to the Federalists to do all this as to
ourselves, but this is not so. Undoubtedly if we
built gunboats on Lake Huron, the Federals could
build others to check them on Lakes Michigan and
Superior quite as fast: But it is equally certain
that they cannot possibly build steam frigates and
corvettes on Lakes Erie and Ontario as we can send
them up through the canals we have mentioned
ready built, manned, and equipped. There is, more-
over, only one practicable means of communication
between Ontario and Erie, which is through the
Welland Canal we have spoken of, held by the
British. As soon as the ice breaks, therefore, if the
war goes on, we may expect to find these lakes
covered with cruisers, and each Federal port on them
as closely blockaded as Boston and New York.
It must not be supposed, however, that the
Federals will quietly acquiesce in our supremacy.
In the time that would intervene between a declara-
tion of war and the thawing of the canals on the St.
Lawrence, the Federals would be masters of the
situation, and would be certain to fit oat something
like the mosquito fleet that swarmed over the West
India station when the " sensation" as to the slaver
right of search ran high. Such vessels, however
ridiculous when opposed to steam frigates, would
bo very formidable when there was nothing to re-
sist them, and we cannot meet them in the Lakes
before next April. Kingston, with its Fort Henry
and some still more formidable batteries, a ficur
(recta, can take care of itself, and a couple of guns
on the long spit of land which shuts in the splendid
harbour of Hamilton would well shield that fine
town. But Whitby, Cobourg, Belville, even Toronto
itself, might be laid in ashes by a couple of ferry
boats carrying long range guns, if immediate steps
are not taken to defend them with earthworks when
it is first seen that war is inevitable. However, as
the Canadian Government have direct telegraphic
communication with Lord Lyons at Washington,
we may trust they are not likely to be taken by
surprise on this point. But there are other means
of carrying the war into the enemy's territory be-
sides by the Welland and St. Lawrence Canals.
Lake Ontario can be reached from Montreal by the
Ottawa and Rideau Canal. This is the longest in
Canada or America, about 120 miles in length, run-
ning from Ottawa to Kingston. The locks on this