Is it wise, then, to withhold $750,000 to finish this great engine of defence, when $15,000,000 is not too much for gunboats which the Warrior could simply run down without firing a shot?

Best known for the sinking of the Confederate ironclad Albemarle, after the Civil War Cushing (1842-1874) took the gunboat Maumee on a long cruise to East Asian waters. Cushing visited, and often made ...