The four years of blockade running, from 1861 to 1865, were so crowded
with incidents and adventures of an extraordinary and startling nature
that each day brought a new and novel experience.
I recall my first day under fire, the trembling knees, the terrifying
scream of the approaching shells, the dread of instant death. Again,
the notable storm at sea in which our ship was buffetted and lashed
by the waves until the straining steel plates cut the rivets and the
fireroom was flooded and the engines stopped, while the tempest tossed
us helpless upon the mountainous waves and all hope of our lives was
gone, until we were mercifully cast upon a reef which extends about
thirty miles from Bermuda. Again, when our party of five persons,
endeavoring to reach the Confederacy in a small launch after the fall
of Fort Fisher, was cast away the second day upon Green Turtle Cay,
an obscure island of the Bahamas, where we dwelt in a negro's hut for
three weeks, and then foolishly risked our lives again for two weeks at
sea in a small boat which landed us in the surf among the man-eating
sharks off Cape Canaveral, in Florida.
In the narration of these reminiscences of war times on the Cape Fear,
I have adhered to facts, supported, when in doubt, by official records.
In the following story of my personal adventures, I have written some
extraordinary incidents which came under my observation, although not
in the sequence described; and the romantic features are based on a
true incident of the war, the hero of which, Captain M----, still
lives in an honored old age. For uniformity, I have changed the text
as it appeared in the _Charlotte Observer_ many years ago, by the
substitution of real names.