The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-10 00:00:00

EXPLOITS IN THE GULF OF BOTHNIA.

We make the subjoined extracts from a communica-
tion of an officer in H. M. ship Leopard, published in
a Dublin paper, giving spirited and graphic sketches of
the recent operations in the Gulf of Bothnia :

" 11. M. S. LEOPARD, GULF OF BOTHNIA, MAY 19.
As yet we done nothing in the fighting line ; we parted
from the Commissioner-in-Chief at Gotsk about a fort-
night since, and have ever since been cruising in the Gulf
of Bothnia, in the hope of taking prizes, but in vain ;
I suspect they have all gone into neutral ports. We
lay three days and nights at a place called Grisselholm,
in Sweden, as there was a Russian brig at anchor there,
in the hope that she would come out, so as we could
catch her ; and we sent away our boats armed every
evening ; two nights the brig came out, but seeing our
boats (fur it is daylight hero all night) she put back
again, so we gave up all hopes of getting her and left
the port. We stood away to the northward and at-
' tempted, in company with the Valorous, the Vulture,
and the Odin, to get to a Russian fortified town called
Boomer to attack, but not having pilots, and all the
buoys of the channel baring been removed, the Valorous,
at eleven o'clock in the morning got aground about
twelve miles below Boomar ; we were front eleven till
four trying to get her off. Fortunately it did not blow,
and at 4 pen. we towed her off, and in doing so strut*
heavily ourselves on a rock !—there was a fix, a heavy
frigate of 1,500 tons stuck on a rock ! Well, we
got hawsers out of two of the steamers to tug
away at us • hammocks were never piped down, and not
a man in the ship went to bed that night, and good cause
they had to stay up and work—there we were, four ships
embayed in rocks, afratd to stir—one of them on tho
ground ; all this about a mile from the shore, and we
momentarily expected during the night to 'see 50 gun
boats come down from Boomer, and if they had
they would Lave murdered us to a man, crippled
and disabled as we were, and the poor old Leopard,
over on her bilge, could not have fought her main-
deck-guns ; fortunately the gun boats did not come off,
and at four o'clock the Leopard floated once more. I
never saw men work so well as our fellows did ;
it was a great escape both of wrecking the ship and
of not being taken prisoners or slaughtered. Strange
them,
buteat
t° say, we have not made a drop of water since, though
she must have been wounded sorely. We thence steered
to the northward, and for the last two days have been
o s
with
he
got cutting and tearing through the ice. We passed fields
of ice five or six miles in length ; we intended going on
to a place called Dgouberg, that mounts twenty guns
and has forty gun-boats. The captain then ordered the
boats
againa as
tthheey
" May 20.—We are at anchor offi
ca meditatedbafi ied ues oarnmdi ng
provedtli
too thick to force hde boats through.
e
place t to ,
called Gallen, rePr Swedish i land
i
highry
up in the Gulf of Bothnia. We
came here to try to into a
get pilots to take nsßussian
port called Vasa or Vesel, but when we asked them
they guessed our intention (that ofattacking it), and
they refused to go. It is wonderful the fear the Swedes