“Such,” says the author of the biography, “were the reasons, no doubt powerful enough, for hurrying off, even without pilots, the ill-appointed and under-manned squadron placed under Sir Charles Napier’s command, at this inclement season of the year, when the periodical gales of the vernal equinox might be daily expected. The squadron, on leaving Spithead, consisted of four sail-of-the-line, four blockships, four frigates, and four steamers (not a single gunboat); and with this force, hastily got together, for the most part manned with the refuse of London and other towns, destitute of even clothing, their best seamen consisting of dockyard riggers and a few coastguard men--and without the latter, it has been alleged, the squadron could not have put to sea--with this inefficient force did Sir Charles Napier leave our shores, to offer battle to the Russian Fleet, consisting of seven-and-twenty well-trained and well-appointed ships of the line, eight or ten frigates, seven corvettes and brigs, and nine steamers, besides small craft and flotillas of gunboats, supposed in the aggregate to number one hundred and eighty.... * * * * * “It is, probably, an unprecedented event in the annals of war, or, at least, in those of our history, that a fleet should be sent out, on a most momentous service so ill-manned that the Commander was directed to endeavour to ‘pick up,’ if possible, foreign seamen in foreign ports, and so ill-provided with munitions of war, that he was restricted in the use of what he most required, in order to render his inexperienced crews as efficient as possible. It is equally worthy of record that the Board of Admiralty, throughout the whole campaign, never supplied the Fleet with a single Congreve rocket, although it was no secret that great numbers had been made in London for the Russians, to whom they were of far less use than to the British Fleet, which could not well undertake any bombardment without them. The Board of Admiralty must have been perfectly aware of the conditions, in these respects, of that Fleet on whose efficiency so much depended, and from which so much was expected, for, in a letter to Sir Charles Napier, from a member of that Board, I find it recorded as his opinion, that the Emperor of Russia ought either to burn his Fleet, or try his strength with the British Squadron whilst he mustered double their numbers, and whilst our crews were ‘so miserably raw!’ Yet this inefficiency was fully and frankly admitted by Sir James Graham, from whom infrequent instructions arrived to supply the deficiency of good men by picking up foreign sailors in the Baltic. The anxiety of the First Lord upon this point was excessive. He was continually inquiring whether the Admiral had been able to ‘_pick up any Swedes