WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1842
245
connected with her navy. If her vessels go into foreign ports for repairs, she has no means to pay for such repairs - to ship her seamen or provision them for even the shortest cruise. The re- sult must for a great while be as it is now, that, after having exhausted the whole amount of the appropriation of an impov- erished government, instead of being in an efficient state to en- counter the enemy, the commander declares himself unable to extricate himself or the vessels under his command and repair to our own ports in obedience to orders. As remarked above, this is actually the case. He avers that without additional means for the payment of the officers and men, he will be left in a situa- tion unable to navigate his vessels from the harbor in which they are now anchored. Facts have been communicated to the government of such a character as would seem to show that many of the officers of the Navy have been and yet are without pay, clothing or the common necessaries of life, notwithstanding the sixty one thousand nine hundred and seventy one dollars which have been placed at the disposition of the commodore, viz: the forty one thousand nine hundred and seventy one dollars received in specie from Yucatan within the last twelve months, according to the memorandum of the Commodore himself, embraced in the report of the Acting Secretary of War and Marine, herewith transmitted/ and the twenty thousand dollars appropriated by the last Congress. They seem, too, to be under the apprehension that the government has withheld means intended for their support, and ascribe great credit to Commodore Moore for his individual exertions in their behalf, apparently ignorant of the sums which had been placed under his control and at his disposition, and suggest that the government had received one half of the twenty five thousand dollars received for services in aiding in the reduction of Tobasco, in 1840. The commander as well as the officers seem to consider it as a matter of right that they should have had the additional appropri- ation of the extra session of the sum of fifty seven thousand four hundred and twenty eight dollars and fifty cents, besides twenty five thousand dollars for outfit and provisions, though it was well known that the appropriation was contingent in its character, and that the government had not had it in its power to advance any portion - no money having been received under the appro- priation to enable it to do so.
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