nd their mouths simply open roadsteads. Vera
Cruz was the only place with anything like a harbor. The ports in
Yucatan, such as Laguna and Campeachy, were only visited for supplies
of fresh meat. The State of Yucatan was not assisting in the war and
did not need to be blockaded. By the time General Taylor took
possession of Matamoras, Commodore Conner's fleet had been
considerably augmented by the addition of the sloops-of-war
"Germantown," "Albany," "Saratoga" and "Decatur"; the steamers
"Spitfire," "Vixen," "Alleghany," "Scorpion" and "Scourge"; the brig
"Truxton"; the gunboats "Reefer," "Bonita," and "Rebel." A little
later, and just before the bombardment of Vera Cruz, the "Ohio," with
seventy-four guns, joined, together with the bomb-vessels "Vesuvius,"
"Hecla," and "Stromboli." There were also a number of small steamers
and gunboats to operate in shallow water. These constituted what was
called the "mosquito fleet." With so formidable a fleet the sailors
felt they were equal to anything, and whenever a larger part of it was
operating at one place, it was difficult to restrain the men. The
youngsters even thought Commodore Conner's prudence and conservatism
to be timidity, and the writer has before him now a book written
twenty-five years after these events, by one who was a midshipman on
the flagship, and he quotes the familiar lines about daring to put
things to the touch. All this was most unfair, but it indicated that
the blue jackets of the Mexican War were buttoned over hearts that
knew no fear.

The blockade of the Mexican ports that was maintained was not by any
means a paper blockade. It was actual, and the very opposite of the
merely formal closing of ports which the United States had so long
protested against in other countries. The hardships of the men and
officers were fearful and the casualties very great. The tediousness
of the service was relieved now and again by daring expeditions into
the rivers and ports, where boats were cut out and taken away from
beneath batteries on shore. The record of such ventures shows that the
navy in 1846 and 1847 was no whit inferior in dash to the one which
made the flag glorious some years before in the war with England. One
instance of such a venture is quoted from the "Recollections of a
Naval Officer," by Captain William Harwar Parker. He was telling of
the blockade at Vera Cruz in 1846. He says: "One of the finest fellows
in the service I often met on Green Isl