The little fleet the Empress had, with great difficulty, collected on the Black Sea has been entirely dispersed and dismasted, and a line of battle ship, of sixty-four guns, commanded by Captain Teesdale, to avoid being wrecked, was obliged to push for Constantinople, and give herself up to the Turks.
As she is very little damaged, she will sail in the spring, under the banners of the Porte. The Russians were before very inferior to the Turks on the Black Sea; and the loss of one ship to them making a difference of two in favor of their enemies, renders their inequality still more desperate.
The Turks having no idea of prisoners on parole, the Russian Captain is sent to associate with the Envoy in the Castle of the Seven Towers. The rest of the ship's company are disposed of in the Bagnio.
Notwithstanding our impolitic ill usage, so fatal to the Turks during the last Russian war, I think we are the favorite nation of such of them as are at all acquainted with the different powers of Europe: I say, impolitic ill usage, because, depend upon it, the very extensive Empire of Turkey will never be in hands so beneficial to England, as whilst it remains in those of its present possessors.
The Turks, happily for us, are not a commercial people, notwithstanding their Empire has every advantage to induce them to become so. We cannot do without those valuable articles which their soil produces almost spontaneously; and the Turk, like the easy possessor of a very rich mine, allows us to enrich ourselves at our pleasure. Three per cent. duty equally on all exports and imports, is, with little exception, their only restriction to Europeans engaged in their trade.
Would the Empress be equally moderate, if in possession of this fertile region? Believe me she would not. As several of our manufactures could not be carried on without her productions, she would only give them on her own terms. Perhaps only in her own bottoms. All her politics would be directed to increase her trade and shipping, and consequently her naval force; and, thus inclined, with such a country, she would soon rise to a maritime power much beyond what the world has ever experienced. We have only to look to Tyre, to Rhodes, and many other places scarce bigger than specks on the map of Turkey, to conceive what a force might arise from this immense, this all producing Empire.