Another is, the mouth of the St. Lawrence River—the route from the sea to the lakes—lies wholly within British territory.
Still another is, we have signed an agreement with England not to maintain more than one small gunboat on the lakes, and not to build any war vessels on the lakes.
In the interests of economy we have practically cut ourselves off from the right or privilege to construct what we please in our own territory. Next, it may be presumed, we will be asking permission to sneeze.
With the Welland Canal and the agreement not to build war vessels on the lakes, we have placed ourselves at great disadvantage.
That agreement does not affect England, for she possesses a waterway for her gunboats from the sea to the lakes. Our only waterway from the sea to the lakes, the Erie Canal, is not deep enough, nor are its locks large enough, for gunboats. England has one hundred such vessels which she could assemble at Montreal upon the slightest suspicion of war, and when the time came for action, they would proceed via the Welland Canal, and destroy Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, and all the other great cities on the lakes before we could improvise an effective defense, and certainly before we could build one ship to oppose her fleet. The “Michigan” would not be effective, the English fleet would soon sink her. It might be argued that Buffalo and the other ports would furnish merchant steamers in an emergency, which could serve as improvised gunboats. But even if such vessels could successfully oppose a fleet of vessels built specially for war purposes, the guns, equipments and ammunition are not on hand to be put on board such ships, even if they were to be found conveniently moored to the docks at Buffalo, nor are the trained crews to be found at a moment’s notice, and those men who are trained would be needed to move the regular ships of the navy on the seaboard, where the enemy would be even more vigorous in his operations.
Many people have a misconception of the effectiveness of the torpedo.
The torpedo is certainly a powerful and destructive weapon when it works all right, but you might plant torpedoes all over some of our harbors, and still they would not protect the cities from destruction, nor prevent the enemy from landing and capturing the city, in spite of the torpedoes.
At New York there is no necessity for a fleet to enter the harbor to destroy the city. There is a place south of Long Island, nine miles distant from the City Hall in New York, where there is plenty of water for a fleet of the largest ironclads to take up its position, from which it could batter down Brooklyn and New York. Some of the modern guns send shot weighing 2,000 lbs. (one ton) eleven miles.
Then too, there might appear a foreign Farragut to PASS the torpedoes, losing perhaps some of his vessels, but still having enough left to accomplish his object.
The torpedo is by no means a sure weapon. During the war of the Rebellion the ship “Ironsides” was stationary for one hour directly over a torpedo which had a 5,000 lb. charge of powder, at Charleston. It failed to explode despite every effort of the operator on shore to get it to do its work.