Happily, in the Navy Department itself juster views prevailed; and the general indifference permitted it at least one compensation--to follow its own ways. The Secretary himself was not a professional man, though he had had official connection with the service in the past; but most fortunately there was called to his assistance one who had been for eighteen years in the navy, had passed while in it to the command of mail steamers, and only five years before the war had resigned and entered civil life. This gentleman, Mr. Gustavus V. Fox, thus combined with business experience and an extensive acquaintance with naval officers the capacities of a seaman. He knew what ships could do and what they could not; but to this common knowledge of sea officers, gained by the daily habit of sea life, he had added the results of study and reflection upon events passing elsewhere than under his own observation. The experiences of the allied navies in the Crimean War had convinced him that, if the wooden sides of ships could not be pitted in prolonged stand-up fight against the stone walls of fortresses, they were capable of enduring such battering as they might receive in running by them through an unobstructed channel. This conviction received support by the results of the attacks upon Hatteras Inlet and Port Royal. He might, indeed, have gone much further back and confirmed his own judgment as a seaman by the express opinion of an eminent soldier. Nearly a hundred years before, Washington, at the siege of Yorktown, had urged the French Admiral De Grasse to send vessels past Cornwallis's works to control the upper York River, saying: "I am so well satisfied by experience of the little effect of land batteries on vessels passing them with a leading breeze that, unless the two channels near Yorktown should be found impracticable by obstructions, I should have the greatest confidence in the success of this important service."[C] [Footnote C: _Washington's Letters_, October 1, 1781.]