Not a little controversy has grown out of the work that followed. A number of good authorities were of the opinion that Vera Cruz should have been captured by the ships alone, while the friends of Conner maintain that an attack by the fleet would have been fatal to it. The question at issue is as to the strength of the castle San Juan de Ulloa, lying on Gallega Reef, just off the city--a reef that really forms the harbor. The city lies on the mainland with a fort at each end, and a wall all around it. It is said, on one hand, that the castle was old and weak, and on the other that it had been strengthened as to the mason-work, and with new and heavy guns, the whole number of efficient guns being at least two hundred. Commodore Conner had a fleet of ten vessels, ranging from the fifty-gun frigate _Potomac_ down to a twelve-gun brig--in all two hundred and one guns, “of which number not half were fitted either by weight or shape to make any serious impression on the walls of a fortress.” The quotation is from a pamphlet on the subject by P. S. P. Conner, a son of the Commodore. Without trying to decide the matter it may be said that Farragut was of the opinion that the fort could have been taken. [Illustration: Brig-of-War Like the _Somers_ Under Full Sail. _From the “Kedge Anchor.”_] However, no naval attack was made, but every preparation was made for a combined army and naval attack. Commodore Conner provided for landing a battery of six heavy guns from the ships, that were to be manned by seamen and sheltered by a sand-bag battery. At sunrise on March 9, 1847, Conner sent the steamers _Spitfire_ and _Vixen_ with four gun-boats to clear the beach near the town. Meantime the troops embarked in huge row-boats, made for the purpose, and by ten o’clock over ten thousand men had been landed with arms and stores. On the next morning the _Spitfire_ was sent in to draw the enemy’s fire and disclose the location of the guns along the mainland. Every gun opened on her and she returned the fire, sending shells to the heart of the town, and then, the guns having been located, she retired. [Illustration: The _Mississippi_ Going to the Relief of the _Hunter_ in a Storm off Vera Cruz. _From a lithograph designed and drawn on stone by Lieutenant H. Walke, U. S. N._]