thout
this article of protection. Our own experience there of the effect of
gunboats for harbor service is recent. Algiers is particularly known
to have owed to a great provision of these vessels the safety of its
city since the epoch of their construction, Before that it had been
repeatedly insulted and injured. The effect of gunboats at present in
the neighborhood of Gibraltar is well known, and how much they were used
both in the attack and defense of that place during a former war. The
extensive resort to them by the two greatest naval powers in the world
on an enterprise of invasion not long since in prospect shews their
confidence in their efficacy for the purposes for which they are suited.
By the northern powers of Europe, whose seas are particularly adapted
to them, they are still more used. The remarkable action between the
Russian flotilla of gunboats and galleys and a Turkish fleet of ships
of the line and frigates in the Liman Sea in 1788 will be readily
recollected. The latter, commanded by their most celebrated admiral,
were completely defeated, and several of their ships of the line
destroyed.

From the opinions given as to the number of gunboats necessary for some
of the principal seaports, and from a view of all the towns and ports
from Orleans to Maine, inclusive, entitled to protection in proportion
to their situation and circumstances, it is concluded that to give them
a due measure of protection in times of war about 200 gunboats will be
requisite.

According to first ideas the following would be their general
distribution, liable to be varied on more mature examination and
as circumstances shall vary; that is to say:

To the Mississippi and its neighboring waters, 40 gunboats.

To Savannah and Charleston, and the harbors on each side from St. Marys
to Currituck, 25.

To the Chesapeake and its waters, 20.

To Delaware Bay and River, 15.

To New York, the Sound, and waters as far as Cape Cod, 50.

To Boston and the harbors north of Cape Cod, 50.

The flotillas assigned to these several stations might each be under
the care of a particular commandant, and the vessels composing them
would in ordinary be distributed among the harbors within the station
in proportion to their importance.

Of these boats a proper proportion would be of the larger size, such
as those heretofore built, capable of navigating any seas and of
reenforcing occasionally the strength of even the most distant ports
w