gmertca, , ?|emp, an& JUapoleon - Vote Hemp

America, Russia, Hemp, and NapoleonFrom the twenty-seventh to the twenty-nineth [of October,1810] w e lay at anchor the greatest part of the time—the windbeing ahead. At six P.M. , on the twenty-nineth, all the fleetwas ordered to get under way; it was blowing strong at thetime, with a high sea running, and so many ships crowdedtogether that I found it impossible to weigh our anchor,without getting foul of some other vessel; w e were thereforeobliged to cut the cable and lose the anchor, with the greaterpart of the small bower. A great many vessels were similarlysituated and were obliged to slip and cut, and make sail, tokeep up with the convoy. I think, without the least exaggeration,I passed more thanfifty buoys on anchors and cables thathad been thus left. 52Losing anchors was such a standard event on these madvoyages that the experienced advised that anyone taking convoythrough the Belt "should have at least three anchors andcables." 53Despite manifold difficulties, the British convoy shuttlesthrough the Belt were eminently successful. Except for two orthree successful Danish sorties, the most damaging of whichwas the one Smith observed, the attacks on the convoys wereinsignificant. Between mid-June and early November, 1809,for instance, 2,210 merchantmen were escorted through theBelt without a single casualty as result of enemy action. 54 T othe extent to which this flow of merchantmen through thestraits of Denmark preserved Britain's economy from collapse,Napoleon owed his defeat to the excellent work of Saumarezand his sailors.Onc e out of the Belt and into the Baltic, the sail of the lineleft the convoy. Th e other escort vessels, the sloops and brigs ofwar and such minor men-of-war, continued with the convoy toa point about fifty leagues beyond the island of Bornholm.142