hostilities; and
this, it will be noticed, was after Napoleon's Russian disaster was
fully known in England. It has not been without interfering for the
moment with other very important services that my Lords have been able
to send you this re-enforcement, and they most anxiously hope that the
vigorous and successful use you will make of it will enable you
shortly to return some of the line of battle ships to England, which,
if the heavy American frigates should be taken or destroyed, you will
immediately do, retaining four line of battle ships." Attention should
fasten upon the importance here attached by the British Admiralty to
the bigger ships; for it is well to learn of the enemy, and to
appreciate that it was not solely light cruisers and privateers, but
chiefly the heavy vessels, that counted in the estimate of experienced
British naval officers. The facts are little understood in the United
States, and consequently are almost always misrepresented.

The reasons for this abundance of force are evident. As regards
commerce Great Britain was on the defensive; and the defensive cannot
tell upon which of many exposed points a blow may fall. Dissemination
of effort, however modified by strategic ingenuity, is thus to a
certain extent imposed. If an American division might strike British
trade on the equator between 20 deg. and 30 deg. west longitude, and also in
the neighborhood of the Cape Verdes and of the Azores, preparation in
some form to protect all those points was necessary, and they are too
wide apart for this to be effected by mere concentration. So the
blockade of the United States harbors. There might be in New York no
American frigates, but if a division escaped from Boston it was
possible it might come upon the New York blockade in superior force,
if adequate numbers were not constantly kept there. The British
commercial blockade, though offensive in essence, had also its
defensive side, which compelled a certain dispersion of force, in
order to be in local sufficiency in several quarters.

These several dispersed assemblages of British ships of war
constituted the totality of naval effort imposed upon Great Britain by
"the fourteen sail of vessels of all descriptions"[216] which composed
the United States navy. It would not in the least have been necessary
had these been sloops of war--were they fourteen or forty. The weight
of the burden was the heavy frigates, two of which together were more
than a