We are much amused to behold the pompous prefix of ‘"
United States,"’ indicating a national vessel, attached by the adroit
Yankees to every possible craft, from a steamer to a dugout, that they can press into their service.
There are our peaceable old friends, the
Potomac river steamboats, which are now know under the extraordinary alias of the ‘"
United States steamer
Mount Vernon,"’ &c., &c, and any number of tugs, bay and sound boats, merchant ships and schooners, not one of which could resist a single well-directed shell or even shot, flourishing upon the rivers, estuaries and high seas as
United States naval vessels.
This is a characteristic trick of a people inexhaustibly for in arts and expedients.
There are in point of fact but seventy-five war vessels in the whole American Navy, and not over half of them are fit for service.
The rest that we hear so much of are merchant craft fitted up for the emergency, which even the small vessels now lying at our own wharves would be fully competent to meet.
Is a blockade by such vessels anything but a paper blockade?
