To close these 185 harbor openings the government had, on the day the proclamation was issued, twenty-six steamers and sixteen sailing ships in commission. But let not the uninformed reader suppose that such a great fleet as this was at once started off on that duty. There were in the home squadron but five sailing ships and seven steamers, while of these a number were at sea _en route_ from nearby foreign to American ports, and of those actually in the United States harbors but three--the _Pawnee_, the _Mohawk_, and the _Crusader_--were in Northern waters. To close 185 harbor openings the Secretary of the Navy had for the moment just three steamers, the rest of the commissioned fleet being either in the ports of the Southern States or scattered the wide world over. And that is to say, there was for the moment no force adequate to blockade efficiently even the one Southern port of Charleston. The navy register showed, however, in addition to the forty-two ships in commission, twenty-seven that were lying at the navy yards in ordinary but fit for service. The government had thirty-nine steamers and thirty-four sailing ships that might be brought together in the course of a few months to enforce the blockade of the 185 harbors of the South and keep contraband trade clear of the eleven thousand and odd miles of Southern sea-beaches. [Illustration: Map Showing Position of UNITED STATES SHIPS OF WAR In Commission March 4, 1861. NOTE:--There is no log book for the John Adams (No. 18) for the year 1861, but it is known that this ship was at Manilla, January 14, 1861, and at Hong Kong, May 1, 1861. ] It is worth noting here that when the Navy Department was first considering its lack of ships for the purpose of enforcing the blockade, a consultation was had with a number of the most eminent ship-owners of New York. The leader of these eminent ship-owners, after considering the subject carefully, said to Secretary Welles that thirty sailing vessels would have to be purchased before an actual blockade of the ports could be completed. As a matter of fact, over 600 ships were employed at the end, and even then some blockaders got through. [Illustration: Gideon Welles. _From a photograph._] But it was not alone in a lack of ships that the government was embarrassed. It was necessary to find officers and crews for the ships that were not in commission. Hundreds of men were needed to man even one of the five screw frigates, and yet to man the whole twenty-seven ships not in commission there were, on March 4, 1861, “only 207 men in all the ports and receiving ships on the Atlantic coast.” “It is a striking illustration of the improvidence of naval legislation and administration that in a country of thirty millions of people only a couple of hundred were at the disposal of the Navy Department.”