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have a wholesome dread of shell. A smaller rifled gun that can also throw shell would be still more useful and I would therefore beg you to select & send out eight or ten of these guns as soon as possible. The description of Gun most suitable you will have the best means of deciding on but it ought to have these three requisites: 1. Riffiling. 2. Capability of throwing shell. 3. Lightness, and appliances for being moved from one part of the vessel to another.
In the meantime Instructors will be procured from the Men of War and our Officers and men will be drilled as efficiently as consistent with their other duties.
Piracy has lately spread to an alarming extent, and the crimes committed have been gradually increasing in boldness till they have at length reached to a degree of extraordinary audacity. It has become systematized and is now carried out by regular professional and organized Associations in a most determined manner. Practical raids have been made on small native Craft. The latter class of Junks comparatively exempt from attack and European vessels were never openly meddled with, though one or two instances had occurred of their being treacherously captured by some portion of their Crews; such exemption however no longer exists. Native vessels of the largest description are constantly being captured, with the most frightful bloodshed; and within the last few months we have had, at least, two or three large European ships similarly treated, the last being that of the Henriette, the particulars of which the newspapers will give you.
It is difficult to see at what point this is to stop. Sailing vessels of any kind whatsoever are evidently very far from safe. The Pirates possess heavily armed and fast sailing vessels manned with Crews composed of the most reckless & desperate men drawn from the scum of China, and are not unfrequently assisted, it is feared, by Europeans. Unless superior in point of speed to a sailing vessel would therefore have much chance in an encounter with these scoundrels and I feel certain that they have become so confident that they would not hesitate to attack a Steamer if they found her with machinery broken or could contrive to render her helpless in that way by the treachery of some Confederates who might be put on board for that purpose. To carry out some such design would indeed be...