In the first place we had to hold the Black Sea, with its extensive sea-board. We defended Sulina and Batoum against Russian attack by land, and by torpedo on the sea. We had to watch the little swift packet-boats equipped as men-of-war, which constantly made a rush from Sebastopol and Odessa (as they did, by the way, in the Crimean War, when twenty to thirty English and French ships were watching them), and when they could get a chance burnt some unfortunate little coasting craft, sending the crews of such vessels adrift in small boats to make the best of their way to the nearest land. In addition to the above-named services, the Turkish fleet was called upon constantly to transport large bodies of troops from port to port. On one memorable occasion the Turkish men-of-war and transports conveyed the whole of Suleiman Pasha's army, consisting of forty thousand men, from the coast of Albania to Salonica, a distance of some eight hundred miles, within the short space of twelve days, a feat, I venture to say, unheard of in the naval annals of this century. Sulina was held safely by the Turkish fleet until the end of the war. Batoum could not have been held by Dervish Pasha and his army had not the Turkish fleet been there to help him. In short, that fleet kept the command of the Black Sea during the whole of that disastrous war, cruising at times in the most fearful weather I have ever experienced, for twelve months in a sea almost without ports of refuge; and it is a remarkable fact that the Turks never lost a ship, constantly attacked though they were, as I shall show hereafter, by the plucky Russian torpedo boats, who frequently made rushes at them from Muscovite ports, and only saved from destruction through the precautions taken against these diabolical machines, which come and go like flashes of lightning. It is true that _in the Danube_ two small Turkish vessels of war were destroyed by torpedoes, but it must be borne in mind the Danube was under _military_ law, and that the look-out kept on board these vessels was not by any means what it should have been. But I must repeat, as so many contrary reports have been spread, that no Turkish ironclad was injured by torpedoes in the Black Sea.