There was one note at least of dissatisfaction over the peace. The London _Times_, commenting in its issue of December 30, 1814, said: “We have retired from the combat with the stripes yet bleeding on our backs. Even yet, however, if we could but close the war with some great naval triumph, the reputation of our maritime greatness might be partially restored. But to say that it has not hitherto suffered in the estimation of all Europe, and, what is worse, of America herself, is to belie common sense and universal experience. ‘Two or three of our ships have struck to a force vastly inferior!’ No; not two or three, but many on the ocean and whole squadrons on the lakes; and the numbers are to be viewed with relation to the comparative magnitude of the two navies. Scarcely is there an American ship-of-war which has not to boast a victory over the British flag; scarcely one British ship in thirty or forty that has beaten an American. With the bravest seamen and the most powerful navy in the world, we retire from the contest when the balance of defeat is so heavily against us.”[44] And more defeats were yet to come. Perhaps yet more would have come, for just as the war closed, the first war-steamer to be built for over ten years, the _Fulton_, was ready for sea. With a double hull of such thickness as to be impervious to harm from any but the heaviest guns, moved by a wheel in the middle which was protected from shot, it seems almost a pity that she should not have been tried with her two 100-pound guns upon the ships blockading New York. But even as it was America had good reason to be well satisfied with the work of her navy. CHAPTER XX Though thirty-one years was to pass before the United States was again to be at war with a foreign power, and then with Mexico--which had no navy--they were far from being years of idleness or want of deeds accomplished. Our flag was now shown in every sea and with the weight and authority which success always carries. Thus N. P. Willis, who in the early thirties was the guest of wardroom officers of the flagship in the Mediterranean, says in his “Pencilings by the Way”: “From the comparisons I have made between our own ships and the ships-of-war of other nations, I think we may well be proud of our navy. I had learned in Europe long before joining the _United States_ that the respect we exact from foreigners is paid more to America afloat than to a continent they think as far off at least as the moon. They see our men-of-war and they know very well what they have done and, from the appearance and character of our officers, what they might do again--and there is a tangibility in the deductions from knowledge and eyesight which beats books and statistics. I have heard Englishmen deny one by one every claim we have to political and moral superiority, but I have found none illiberal enough to refuse a compliment--and a handsome one--to Yankee ships.”[45]