"Stone Blockades"

The London Times, as quoted by us yesterday complacently observes that ‘it never entered into the thoughts of men like Jervis and Nelson, and Collingwood that they could save themselves trouble and their country expense by totally destroying the ports they were set to watch.  Yet (it adds) what might not England, with her undisputed supremacy at sea, have effected, had she suffered herself to meditate such an iniquity?’

We fear the London journal is not very well “up” in the history of the English navy, whose exploits form so large a part of its nation’s glory.  Whatever Jervis, and Nelson and Collingwood may have thought proper or improper to allow themselves with regard to other French ports, (after Boulogne had been blockade by sunken hulks) it at least appears that the “iniquity” was practiced against the United States in the war of 1812.  A correspondent recalls the fact that during that war the British commanders on Lake Champlain (see Cooper’s History of the American Navy vol. 2 page 34) attempted to fill up the harbor of Otter creek by sinking several vessels loaded with stones.  This enterprise had for its authors Sir James Provost, Lieutenant General de Rottenburg, Major Generals Brisbane, Power, Robinson and Bynes, also the commander of the fleet, Sir James Yeo. – {National Intelligencer.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2