their shipping.  “At this period,” says one of her naval historians, “the naval force of Britain, so multiplied and so expert from long practice, had acquired an intimate knowledge of their (the French) harbors, their bays and creeks; her officers knew the depth of water, and the resistance likely to be met with in every situation.”  On the other hand, these harbors and towns were frequently stripped of their garrisons by the necessities of distant wars, being left with no other defence than their fortifications and militia.  And yet, notwithstanding all this, they escaped unharmed during the entire contest.  They were frequently attacked, and in some instances the most desperate efforts were made to effect a permanent lodgment; but in no case was the success at all commensurate with the expense of life and treasure sacrificed, and no permanent hold was made on either the maritime frontiers of France or her allies.  This certainly was owing to no inferiority of skill and bravery on the part of the British navy, as the battles of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the almost total annihilation of the French marine, have but too plainly proven.  Why then did these places, escape?  We know of no other reason, than that they were fortified; and that the French knew how to defend their fortifications.  The British maritime expeditions to Quiberon, Holland, Boulogne, the Scheldt, Constantinople, Buenos Ayres, &c., sufficiently prove the ill-success, and the waste of life and treasure with which they must always be attended.  But when her naval power was applied to the destruction of the enemy’s marine, and in transporting her land forces to solid bases of operations on the soil of her allies, in Portugal and Belgium, the fall of Napoleon crowned the glory of their achievements.

[Footnote 18:  Only eighteen and a half miles across the Channel at the narrowest place.]

Let us now examine the several British naval attacks on our own forts, in the wars of the Revolution and of 1812.

In 1776 Sir Peter Parker, with a British fleet of nine vessels, carrying about two hundred and seventy[19] guns, attacked Fort Moultrie, in Charleston harbor, which was then armed with only twenty-six guns, and garrisoned by only three hundred and seventy-five regulars and a few militia.  In this contest the British were entirely defeated, and lost, in killed and wounded, two hundred and five men, while their whole two hundred and seventy guns killed and wounded only thirty-two men in the fort.  Of this trial of strength, which was certainly a fair one, Cooper in his Naval History, says:—­“It goes fully to prove the important military position that ships cannot withstand forts, when the latter are properly armed, constructed, and garrisoned.  General Moultrie says only thirty rounds from the battery were fired, and was of opinion that the want of powder alone prevented the Americans from destroying the men-of-war.”

[Footnote 19:  These vessels rated two hundred and fifty-four guns, but the number actually carried is stated to have been two hundred and seventy.]