Sir Edward Codrington reported that, on the morning after the battle, “out of a fleet composed of eighty-one vessels, only one frigate and fifteen smaller vessels are in a state ever again to put to sea.” The allied fleets lost 177 killed and 480 wounded. The Turks were estimated to have lost at least six thousand killed. This action created a great sensation throughout Europe; not only because no great naval action had been fought for some years, but because the friends of Grecian independence saw in the battle the probable freedom of that oppressed State. But politicians were alarmed at what they feared would be the deplorable consequences of leaving Turkey disarmed, in the presence of ambitious and menacing Russia, as the battle had already, it was said, “turned the Black Sea into a Russian lake,” and that great opportunity for Greece was lost through the fears and vacillation of diplomatists. [Illustration] [Illustration: SINOPE, 1853. (The Russians under Admiral Nachimoff Annihilating the Turkish Fleet, in the harbor of Sinope.)] SINOPE, 1853. Sinope is a very ancient town, situated mostly upon a peninsula, which juts out from the coast of Anatolia into the Black Sea. It was once far-famed as the capital city of Mithridates, King of Pontus, as well as the birth place of Diogenes, of whom, perhaps, more people have heard, although he was not a King. After frequent and honorable mention in very ancient history, we, later on, find it, when it fell into the all-conquering Romans’ power, the seat of the government of the celebrated Pliny, and the remains of the aqueduct then built by him are still to be traced in the neighborhood. In 1470 Mohamet II included it in the Turkish Empire, of which it has ever since remained a part. The modern town has about ten thousand people, and presents to the view of one arriving before it by sea the peculiar, shabby, picturesque and dilapidated appearance of most third-rate Turkish places, where red-tiled roofs overhang mouldy, moss-covered, wooden buildings. Here and there among the dull red of the roofs rises the bright and graceful minaret of a mosque; while in the background clumps of the funereal cypress show the spots where the faithful lie at rest. Portions of a ruinous, turreted wall are to be seen here and there; but there are no forts or other defences worthy of the name, although for years it had been a Turkish “military” port, where men-of-war were occasionally built or repaired. Perhaps Sinope would never have been heard of in modern times, but for a naval action which created an unusual sensation throughout both the Christian and Moslem worlds, and which alienated from the Russians, at the very beginning of the Crimean War, the sympathy of many who would otherwise have been favorable to their designs. The affair about to be narrated was an abuse of superior force, at a time when war was inevitable, but had not been proclaimed, between Russia and the Ottoman Porte.