of Police, that Your Excellency declines increase to the force already upon duty at the Storehouses, but that directing any additional Watchmen may be procured, provided they are paid for by the Naval Department.
For this I have no authority however, I forward the proposition of Your Excellency to the Commander-in-Chief. In the interim I trust Your Excellency will see the necessity for vigilance and an increase of numbers to prevent the loss which is almost certain, to property inadequately protected.
The stores are at present exposed to the depredations of numberless Chinese boatmen and women, with every description of rabble, occupied about the beach, and the wrecks of the vessels stranded in the late gale, and fallen houses - one or two of the former being in close contiguity to the stores at West Point.
There has nothing on my part been omitted, and I beg to report to Your Excellency that not only are the people kept constantly on the alert at the stores, but that an officer with a guard beats visits the yard twice in the night, at unstated periods between nine and twelve P.M. and between twelve and four A.M.
I have, &c.
(Signed) J. Hanway Slomidge