The small port of Balaklava was used to unload ships and store supplies for British troops. The process was chaotic and inefficient, and Fenton described in one of his letters home how congested the harbour was: ‘No one, I think, ever saw so many vessels crowded together in so small a space as in this little harbour’. The ships that could not fit within the harbour were forced to anchor offshore. As a result, when a hurricane struck in November 1854 many of the supply ships in the open sea were sunk.