No such doubt was possible as to Canada in 1813. It depended wholly upon the sea, and it touched the sea at Montreal. The United States, with its combined naval and military strength, crude as the latter was, was at the beginning of 1813 quite able in material power to grapple two out of the three parts,—Montreal and Kingston. Had they been gained, Lake Erie would have fallen; as is demonstrated by the fact that the whole Erie region went down like a house of cards the moment Perry triumphed on the lake. His victory was decisive, simply because it destroyed the communications of Malden with the sea. The same result would have been achieved, with effect over a far wider region, by a similar success in the east. 27. LESSONS OF THE WAR WITH SPAIN[97] _The Possibilities of a “Fleet in Being”_ [Admiral Cervera left the Cape Verde Islands on April 29, 1898. After touching at Martinique on May 11, he coaled at Curaçao on the 15th, and entered Santiago on the 19th. On news of Cervera’s arrival at Martinique, Sampson’s squadron from Porto Rico and Schley’s Flying Squadron from Hampton Roads converged on Key West. Sampson had his full strength in the approaches to Havana by the 21st and Schley was off Cienfuegos, the chief southern port of Cuba, on the 22d. “We cannot,” writes Admiral Mahan, “expect ever again to have an enemy so entirely inapt as Spain showed herself to be; yet, even so, Cervera’s division reached Santiago on the 19th of May, two days before our divisions appeared in the full force they could muster before Havana and Cienfuegos.”[98]—EDITOR.] As was before said, the disparity between the armored fleets of the two nations was nominally inconsiderable; and the Spaniards possessed one extremely valuable—and by us unrivalled—advantage in a nearly homogeneous group of five[99] armored cruisers, very fast, and very similar both in nautical qualities and in armament. It is difficult to estimate too highly the possibilities open to such a body of ships, regarded as a “fleet in being,” to use an expression that many of our readers may have seen, but perhaps scarcely fully understood.