Another event of a somewhat different character was
the occasion of much excited feeling and comment,
particularly in the United States. The descent and
attack by British vessels on an Atlantic port was a
matter of popular expectation. The Syndicate had
repellers and crabs at the most important points; but,
in the minds of naval officers and a large portion of
the people, little dependence for defence was to be
placed upon these. As to the ability of the War
Syndicate to prevent invasion or attack by means of
its threats to bombard the blockaded Canadian port,
very few believed in it. Even if the Syndicate could
do any more damage in that quarter, which was
improbable, what was to prevent the British navy from
playing the same game, and entering an American
seaport, threaten to bombard the place if the Syndicate
did not immediately run all their queer vessels high
and dry on some convenient beach?

A feeling of indignation against the Syndicate had
existed in the navy from the time that the war contract
had been made, and this feeling increased daily. That
the officers and men of the United States navy should
be penned up in harbours, ports, and sounds, while
British ships and the hulking mine-springers and
rudder-pinchers of the Syndicate were allowed to roam
the ocean at will, was a very hard thing for brave
sailors to bear. Sometimes the resentment against this
state of affairs rose almost to revolt.