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that even a schooner of not more than two hundred tons burden, could in one hour, with perfect ease, burn or destroy the whole whale fleet which congregates here during the winter months." is was no small concern. e American whaling fleet in the northern Pacific was upwards of 75 vessels. eir loss would hurt not only economically, but psychologically. 10 Unfortunately, the Hawaiian government of King Kamehameha (the Fourth), which was practically bank- rupt, had no protection to offer the American whaling fleet. As Dryer declared, "The universal plea is the utter inability of the Hawaiian Government to prevent an armed vessel from entering the harbors. ey say, 'we have no forts, no armed vessels, no army and no cannon.' My reply is 'give us the best you have; if it be only paper cannon, give us that.'" is plea for protec- tion touched a nerve in Seward, for he soon forwarded an extract from the dispatch to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (fig. 6). 11 But at that stage, there was little Welles could do. All four eastern squadrons of the U.S. Navy were fully occupied with a publicly-declared blockade of Con- federate ports, and the Navy's Pacific Squadron— with about 8 armed vessels—had its hands full trying to patrol from the coast of the Washington Territory all the way down to Panama. ere simply were no vessels to spare. 12 Closer to home—in the Gulf of Mexico—the sit- uation was about to become even more complicated. e Republic of Mexico had borrowed heavily from the major European powers, particularly Great Britain, France, and Spain. Unable to service this debt, Mexico had defaulted on its loans in July 1861. e European "allies," as they came to be called, reacted with fury. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic were soon filled with speculation that if the Mexicans did not honor their obligations, the allies would send a military force to compel them to pay up. Such an action by the European powers would be a gross violation of the Monroe Doctrine. is policy, initiated by Pres. James Monroe in 1823, declared that any European armed intervention in the Americas would not be tolerated by the United States. But given the ongoing rebellion, the Union was hardly in a posi- tion to enforce it. Seward had already been charged by the president with preventing the use of Mexican ports by Confederate armed vessels. e potential for a large European naval force in the Gulf of Mexico introduced yet another complexity to his task. e danger soon became even more unsettling. Diplomatic dispatches received in early November from U.S. Minister to Spain Carl Schurz and U.S. Minister to France William Dayton indicated that some of the Europeans might want a lot more than just money. Schurz reported that the Spanish press and some gov- ernment officials were talking of encouraging the Mex- icans to call a national congress "for the purpose of voting a constitutional monarchy and electing a king." Dayton added that the more precise plot involved hav- ing a member of Spain's royal family "called upon by the people of Mexico to assume the throne." 13 ese purported intrigues did not overly bother Seward, who replied to Dayton: We cannot observe the proceedings of France, Great Britain and Spain in regard to Mexico without deep concern. But the effects upon our interests are likely to be only incidental. If it were possible that we should lose our national integrity, there is no knowing how we should stay its foreign consequences. Since, however, I feel well assured that we shall restore the power and the prestige of the Union in good time I am not disturbed by the external acci- dents of the war. 14 THE CAPITOL DOME 49 Fig. 6. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, c. 1860s