RUNNING THE BLOCKADE
[Illustration: BURNING OF THE _NIGHT HAWK_. _Frontispiece._]
RUNNING THE BLOCKADE
A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF
ADVENTURES, RISKS, AND
ESCAPES DURING THE
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
By THOMAS E. TAYLOR
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JULIAN CORBETT
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1896
INTRODUCTION
A German admiral has remarked that the most valuable naval history lies
in the despatches and logs of naval officers. Our own Navy Record
Society by the line it has taken thoroughly endorses this view, and has
committed itself to the teaching of naval history from the mouths of the
men who made it.
Mr. Taylor's work then must not be taken as a mere record of personal
adventure, however absorbing it be found from this point of view. As a
picture of exciting escapes, of coolness and resource at moments of
acute danger, of well-calculated risks, boldly accepted and obstinately
carried through, it has few rivals in recent sea-story: but its deeper
value does not lie here. Over and above its romantic interest it will be
recognised by students of the naval art as a real and solid contribution
to history; for it presents to us from the pen of a principal actor the
most complete account we have of a great blockade in the days of steam.
The important part that blockade plays in naval warfare is a thing
hardly recognised outside professional ranks. For the general reader,
the grand manœuvres of a great fleet in chase of the enemy and the
stirring hours of some decisive action throw into oblivion the tedious
months of dull, anxious, and exhausting work with which by far the
greater part of the war is taken up. Yet it is hardly too much to say
that during the most glorious period of our maritime history nine-tenths
of the energies of our admirals were devoted to blockade. In the future
it is possible that it will take even a higher place. Should England
become engaged with a first-rate foreign power, single-handed, it is a
recognised fact amongst naval strategists that in a week she could close
every one of her enemy's ports and have a fleet free to reduce at its
leisure everything he held beyond the seas. With almost any two Powers
against her it is probable she could do as much: and it is the
recognition of this power abroad which gives England, in spite of her
military weakness, so commanding a position in Europe.
The importance then of studying every scrap of information on the
subject in order to perfect our knowledge of the art of blockade cannot
be exaggerated, and Mr. Taylor's simple and straightforward record of
his experiences may claim to be perhaps the fullest contribution to the
subject that as yet exists. Experiences of individual captains we have
had, and, read with the present work, they are of high value: but Mr.
Taylor has something more to tell. Not only did he run the blockade
personally a greater number of times than any one else, but, boy as he
was at the time, he was the chief organiser of a great and systematised
attack on the Northern blockade, such as the world had never seen
before. His operations may be said to have opened a new era in the
history of blockade, and one which bids fair to have far-reaching
consequences for every maritime Power.
To make clear his position and its dangers and difficulties a word must
be said on the general subject of blockade. Blockade, it must be clearly
borne in mind, is of two kinds, the one military, the other commercial.
The first concerns the belligerents alone, and consists in one of them,
who has obtained a working command of the sea, imprisoning the other's
war fleets in their own ports. It was this form of blockade which
absorbed by far the greatest part of our naval activity during the great
French wars. During the American Civil War it was considerably
practised, and from American sources may be studied in complete detail
the efforts of the Confederate war-ships to escape the vigilance of
Federal blockading squadrons. The second form, or commercial blockade,
is one that principally concerns neutrals, and it was of course to this
form alone that Mr. Taylor's operations extended.
The International Law which regulates its conditions as between neutrals
and belligerents is shortly this. A belligerent, if strong enough at sea
to close one or more ports of his enemy, may give notice to Neutral
Powers that such port or ports are blockaded, and thereafter if any
neutral vessel attempts to enter or leave them, the belligerent may
treat it as an enemy, and may destroy or capture and condemn it as an
ordinary prize. To run a blockade then is an operation attended with all
the risks of war. Indeed a blockade-runner is in an even worse position
than a hostile belligerent; for not being a combatant he may not resist
the efforts of the blockaders to destroy or capture him. He is entitled
to escape if he can, but a single shot or blow in his own defence makes
him a pirate, and a belligerent capturing him may treat him as such. But
it must always be remembered that for a belligerent to be entitled to
exercise these high prerogatives he must first have constituted a real
and effective blockade. A mere declaration that a port is closed is not
enough. It must be so closely watched and invested with an adequate
naval force that no neutral can leave or enter without running present
danger of being sunk or captured.
Analogous to the rights arising out of an effective blockade, and always
to be clearly distinguished from them, is the right of a belligerent to
treat as an enemy a neutral vessel carrying contraband of war to his
enemy's ports, and this right he may always exercise, whether the ports
in question be effectively blockaded or not.
It was this consideration, no doubt, combined with a desire to preserve
a strict neutrality and to see the South treated as belligerents and not
as mere insurgents, that induced the English Government to recognise the
Federal blockade as soon as it was declared. At the opening of the war
the Federal Government, in defiance of International Law, declared the
whole Southern seaboard under blockade. It was a blockade they were then
wholly unable to enforce or even to pretend to enforce, but as most of
our blockade-runners carried contraband of war, there was very little to
be gained by disputing the Federal pretensions. Some injustice, no
doubt, was thus done to the South. But it was more than counterbalanced
by the advantage they gained in that the recognition of the blockade
made them indisputably belligerents. For these reasons our Government
thought it wise to waive its neutral rights and submit to a paper
blockade, which did not exist. As the Northern power increased at sea
the blockade became more and more effective, and by the time Mr. Taylor
had got fully to work it may be said to have been something more than a
pretence. Finally it became very strict and thoroughly effective, and it
is with this instructive period that his reminiscences are chiefly
concerned.
This declaration of a blockade that could not be enforced at the time
was not the only extension of belligerent rights which the Federal
Government claimed and exercised in respect of blockade. As Mr. Taylor
fully explains, they did not confine their operations against
blockade-runners to the established practice of watching the closed
ports. Not only did they cruise for offenders on the high seas, but they
intercepted them close to their points of departure, thousands of miles
from the blockaded ports. Nay, they even went so far as to attempt to
blockade the neutral ports which the offending vessels were using as
bases of operations. To most of these claims no objection was made, and
there is no doubt that in any future war similar operations will be
recognised without question, as within belligerent rights.
In previous wars a belligerent declaring a blockade had to concern
himself with little more than turning back ordinary merchantmen who had
not received notice of the blockade, or cutting off small fry of the
smuggling type that slipped over from adjacent coasts to take their
chance of getting in. Such a thing as neutral merchants establishing
public companies to build fleets of specially designed vessels for the
avowed purpose of breaking a blockade which was thoroughly effective
against ordinary types of merchantmen, was a thing unknown to
International Law. And further, when these merchants stretched their
rights as neutrals so far as to establish regular bases almost in the
enemy's waters from which to conduct their revolutionary operations, it
was obvious that some latitude must be granted to the blockading power.
No objection, therefore, was ever raised to his cutting off vessels
avowedly constructed for blockade-running at any point he chose; but
when he attempted to blockade neutral ports from which they were acting,
England put her foot down and compelled the Federal cruisers to draw
off. In this she was clearly within her rights. But although the Federal
claim to this bold extension of belligerent rights was undoubtedly
illegal, it was not without provocation. It is another law of blockade
that a vessel is not "guilty" and cannot be interfered with unless it is
bound for a blockaded port. The system pursued by Mr. Taylor of
establishing depots or bases on British territory close to American
waters thus greatly increased the difficulties of the cruisers. Goods
destined for the blockaded ports were consigned first to one of these
bases, Bermuda, Havana, or the Bahamas, and on their way could not be
touched by the Northern captains. It was naturally a great temptation to
these officers as they watched the offensive traffic pouring into the
runner's bases to see that it did not get out. It is even conceivable
that England might have been induced to wink at their proceedings. But
it so happened that the first and only attempt to blockade
blockade-runners in a British port was made by the very officer who was
the culprit in the _Trent_ affair, and that too while we were still
unsoothed from his last violation of our neutrality. The British
Government, therefore, happened to be in a very irritable mood with the
North, and though they had hitherto been inexhaustible in their sympathy
with the Federal belligerent pretensions, they now peremptorily stopped
their complacency and the North had to submit.
Whether the claim made tentatively by the Northern Government is
destined to become recognised by International Law is by no means clear.
In the case in question the neutral was too powerful to be resisted.
Shortly after, however, the same scheme was actually put in operation by
one of the most famous of Mr. Taylor's colleagues, the "notorious
Captain Roberts," the arch-blockade runner and a British naval officer.
When the American war closed, the Turkish Government had been trying for
months to suppress an insurrection in Crete by blockading the island on
the old lines. Hobart (whose _nom de guerre_ as a blockade-runner was
"Roberts"), profiting by his recent experience, undertook to suppress it
in a week, and his offer was accepted. The insurgents were living
entirely on supplies sent them from Greece, and Hobart having been
placed in command of the blockading squadron proceeded at once to
blockade the Greek vessels in their own ports, and the Cretans were
immediately starved into surrender.
This and every other indication show a tendency for the belligerent
rights of blockade to increase at the expense of the neutral. If this be
so, then blockade must become a more and more effective naval operation,
and hence the importance of its study down to the minutest particulars
from which any forecast of the future may be obtained.
For the non-professional reader one of the chief points of technical
interest in Mr. Taylor's book will be the light it throws on a great
national question, which periodically comes out in moments of alarm. It
is now a common subject for paragraphists to dilate upon how, if England
lost command of the sea, her food supply would be cut off in a week (or
some other minute period) and herself be brought to the mercy of her
enemy. However useful such prognostications may be for stimulating an
interest in the navy, they are full of fallacies and even dangerous as
leading to demands for naval armaments so extravagant as to cause the
taxpayer to turn his back on the navy altogether, and button his pockets
in sheer disgust. To begin with, if England lost the command of the sea,
it does not follow that any one else would obtain it, a fact too often
lost sight of in naval discussion. The thing does not hang in a simple
dilemma. You cannot say, either England has the command or her enemy has
it. There is still the middle hypothesis, that neither has it. And this
in all reasonable probability is the worst that could suddenly befall
us. The destruction of England's command of the sea is no child's play,
and even if three Powers together succeeded in doing it, it could only
be at such a sacrifice to themselves as would leave the seas practically
free to the operations of neutrals. Mr. Taylor's experiences show
clearly how surprisingly easy it was for bold and expert captains with
adequate vessels to run the most strict and effective blockades. Were
England to become engaged in a great war, the first step would be for
numbers of her mercantile marine to pass to neutral flags, and all these
vessels with their crews would be ready-made blockade-runners the moment
there was a call for them. And even assuming that by some extraordinary
chance the British fleet for a time was suppressed with little or no
damage to the enemy, the precedents of the American war go to show that
the navies of three Powers absolutely intact could hardly avail to
maintain a blockade of such a coast-line as ours.
The conditions of blockade, it is true, have changed, but the balance
remains much the same. Mr. Taylor considers that search-lights, for
instance, tell quite as much for one side as the other. Increased speed
is at least as favourable for running as it is for blockading. Torpedo
boats seem hardly to affect the balance at all. For while they render
the position of a blockading squadron less secure than formerly, they on
the other hand furnish it with ideal patrols. Quick-firing guns are all
in favour of the blockader, but on the other hand, long-range guns of
position are all against him, compelling him to keep further to sea and
so to cover more ground. The extreme importance of invisibility too, on
which Mr. Taylor insists, shows how great an advantage a runner, able to
procure good smokeless coal, would have over a force blockading the
English coast which could not obtain it. On the whole we may safely
conclude that a commercial blockade is certainly no easier than it was
in the sixties. Many indications from the following pages show how
difficult it is to maintain the blockade even of half a dozen ports, if
you are unable to intercept the regular runners at their points of
departure. This a force without undisputed mastery of the sea could
never effect to a sufficient extent. The lesson then that the following
pages most clearly teaches is, that the danger of the British Isles
being blockaded by any conceivable combination of hostile Powers, so as
to reduce her even approximately near starvation, may be dismissed as
outside the region of practical strategy; and in the next place they
show us the vast importance of maintaining in our navy an adequate force
of vessels of a type calculated to render a commercial blockade really
effective. What Mr. Taylor was able to do with one little steamer to
prolong Lee's resistance is a lesson to be remembered beside Dundonald's
operations on the coast of Spain.
Such are a few of the considerations which Mr. Taylor's book suggests.
Different men will draw different lessons from the facts it presents,
but its value as the work of a man of unequalled experience in the
working of a great blockade will be admitted by all: and whatever weight
may be attached to the author's conclusions from his practical
experience, the little work will amply justify its existence if it in
any way stimulates interest in the practical side of a subject, which
naval writers seem inclined to leave too much in the hands of
International lawyers.
JULIAN CORBETT.
_May 1896._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
HOW I BEGAN 1
CHAPTER II
MY FIRST ATTEMPT ON THE _DESPATCH_ 16
CHAPTER III
THE _BANSHEE NO. 1_ 33
CHAPTER IV
THE _BANSHEE'S_ FIRST RUN IN 44
CHAPTER V
FORT FISHER AND WILMINGTON 55
CHAPTER VI
THE REST OF THE _BANSHEE NO. 1.'S_ CAREER 70
CHAPTER VII
LIFE AT NASSAU 86
CHAPTER VIII
OUR FLEET 101
CHAPTER IX
BERMUDA 115
CHAPTER X
EXPERIENCES ASHORE IN DIXIE'S LAND 131
CHAPTER XI
HAVANA AND GALVESTON 145
CHAPTER XII
BLOCKADES OF THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 166
INDEX 177
ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, ETC.
BURNING OF THE _NIGHT HAWK_ _Frontispiece_ iv
CHART OF WILMINGTON HARBOUR AND APPROACHES _Page_ 45
PORTRAIT OF COLONEL LAMB _To face page_ 56
_BANSHEE_ CHASED BY _JAMES ADGER_ _To face page_ 78
_WILL-O'-THE-WISP'S_ DASH FOR WILMINGTON _To face page_ 106
_BANSHEE NO. 2_ RUNNING THE GAUNTLET OF THE
GALVESTON BLOCKADING SQUADRON IN DAYLIGHT _To face page_ 156
MAP OF THE EAST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA _At
end_
CHAPTER I
HOW I BEGAN
Feeling in Liverpool—Declaration of blockade—Its immediate
result—Effect on trade in Liverpool—The theory of
blockades—Attitude of the Federal States—Seaboard of the
Seceding States—The Federal Navy—Energy of the Northern
States—Additions to the Federal Fleet—Position of the
Southerners at sea—Want of building yards and material—Commerce
destroyers—The _Merrimac_ and the _Monitor_—The _Alabama_
and her consorts—Attitude of Great Britain—A royal
proclamation—Preparation for blockade-running—Amateurish
efforts—Daring attempts—The _Trent_ affair—Launched
as a blockade-runner.
At the outbreak of the great American Civil War I was serving as
assistant to a firm of Liverpool merchants trading chiefly with India
and the United States. There was little in my life at the outset to
foretell the full taste of danger, excitement, and adventure which it
was my fortune so early to enjoy. I had nothing to hope for beyond the
usual life of office routine and a dim chance of a partnership abroad in
the future.
Young as I was, my interest in the coming struggle was deeply aroused.
From the position I occupied its significance was brought home to me
with the absorbing interest of a factor in my career. My own fortunes
and those of my nearest friends seemed at their outset to be bound up in
a piece of history that promised to leave its mark upon the world.
Nowhere indeed out of America was the secession of the Southern States
more keenly watched or canvassed than in Liverpool offices and upon the
Exchange of the city, which American trade had begotten and nursed; and
the particular aspect of the impending war was most calculated to fill
the imagination of youngsters like myself, who were awakening from the
dreams of boyhood to the excitements of real life.
It will be remembered that, as soon as war was seen to be inevitable,
President Lincoln sanctioned the heroic measure of attempting to choke
secession by closing every orifice through which supplies could be
drawn, and in the middle of April 1861 rebellion was turned into civil
war by his declaring the whole of the Southern ports in a state of
blockade. One of the immediate results of this act of President Lincoln
was the prompt acknowledgment of the South as belligerents by England
and France. Yet the Federal States persisted in maintaining that the
Confederates were rebels, and that whosoever ventured to recognise them
as belligerents must be regarded as friends of rebels and no friends of
the North. They ignored the fact that their interference with neutral
trade, by this declaration of blockade, was a virtual concession of
belligerency to the South. A declaration of blockade presupposes a state
of war and not mere rebellion, and the claim by the Federals of a right
to seize neutral vessels attempting to break a blockade was one which
can be exercised only by a belligerent; exercised by any one else it is
mere piracy.
The effect of the news on the Liverpool Exchange it is needless to
describe. By the scratch of a foreign pen a blow that was without
precedent was struck at the chief trade of the port. So prodigious
indeed was this first act of war that for some time there was a doubt
whether the Neutral Powers would recognise it. Only five years before
the Powers assembled at Paris to wind up the Russian war had by solemn
agreement declared, as the final and universal law of nations, that
blockades to be binding must be effective; that is to say, that all the
ports declared to be blockaded must be actually invested, or at least so
closely watched by a cruising squadron that no ship can attempt to leave
or enter without manifest danger of capture. Now, as the seaboard of the
Seceding States extended from the river Potomac in Virginia, above Cape
Hatteras, down to the Rio Grande (the southern frontier of Texas), the
coast-line which the Federal Government had to watch effectively was
some 3000 miles in length. It was studded, moreover, at wide intervals
with ten or a dozen ports of first-rate importance.
The total fleet of the United States when the war broke out consisted of
less than 150 vessels, of which fully one-third were quite
unserviceable. About forty had crews; the rest were out of commission,
and of these ten or eleven of the best were lying at the Norfolk Navy
Yard and fell into the hands of the Confederates. From these figures it
will be seen, therefore, how impossible it was at first to maintain the
blockade which the Northerners had declared, and how ineffectual it must
be, seeing the length of coast-line to be watched.
With their usual energy, however, the Northerners set to work to
increase their fleet; within very few weeks over 150 vessels had been
purchased and equipped for sea, and more than fifty ironclads and
gunboats laid down and rapidly pushed forward towards completion. In
addition to these a large number of river craft were requisitioned and
protected by bullet-proof iron for service on the rivers; but even with
these vigorous measures the blockade was anything but effective during
the first eighteen months or two years of the war. But the Northerners
steadily and by almost superhuman efforts increased their fleet, and at
the beginning of 1865 had so far succeeded that they possessed a fleet
of nearly 700 vessels, of which some 150 were employed upon the blockade
of Wilmington and Charleston alone, and patrolling their adjacent
waters.
It can easily be imagined, therefore, that attempting to get in and out
of those ports in the latter months of 1864 and the early ones of 1865
was a very different business from the condition of affairs which
existed earlier in the war. When the above ports fell into the hands of
the Northerners, the blockade, considering the nature of the coast-line
and types of vessels employed as blockaders and runners, was to all
intents and purposes as effective as could be expected; for the
blockading fleet consisted of almost every description of craft, from
the old-fashioned 60-gun frigate to the modern "Ironsides" and
"Monitors," supplemented by dozens of merchant-steamers converted into
gunboats—not very formidable, perhaps, as war-ships, but still dangerous
to blockade-runners, especially when fast.
The Southerners, on the other hand, were practically without any navy,
with the exception of a few old wooden vessels which they seized at
Norfolk Navy Yard at the outbreak of the war; and, as they were almost
entirely devoid of engineering works, material, or skilled labour, they
could do but little to compete with the North upon the ocean. Their
naval efforts were chiefly in the direction of supplying themselves from
outside sources with commerce destroyers, such as the _Alabama_,
_Florida_, _Shenandoah_, _Georgia_, etc., though from the wretched and
scanty material which they possessed they succeeded in building two or
three formidable ironclads; but their engines and armament were
defective, and their crews unskilled. Notwithstanding these drawbacks,
however, the _Merrimac_, one of the old wooden steamers which they had
seized at Norfolk, and which they had converted into an ironclad by
covering the hull with railway iron, fought a gallant fight in Hampton
Roads with the celebrated _Monitor_, after having destroyed on the
previous day the _Congress_ and _Cumberland_, two large Northern
war-ships.
Another ironclad was also improvised by the Southerners at Mobile. She
was called the _Tennessee_, and was altogether a more formidable craft
than the _Merrimac_, both as regards armament and size, but like the
_Merrimac_ was terribly defective in engine power. When Farragut
attacked Mobile she did considerable damage to his fleet, and for a time
engaged it single-handed, but at last was forced to haul down her flag.
The Confederates also built another small ironclad at Wilmington on the
same lines as the _Merrimac_ and _Tennessee_, but unfortunately she ran
ashore on her passage down the river, in order to attack the blockaders
outside, and became a total wreck. In addition to the ships I have
mentioned they possessed the _Sumpter_, _Rappahanock_, _Tallahasse_
(steamers), and several sailing vessels; but with these vessels they had
no chance against their powerful rivals in actual warfare, although the
_Alabama_ and her consorts swept the mercantile navy of the United
States from the ocean.
Seeing how inadequate the Federal navy was at the time when the blockade
was declared, there was certainly a strong case for treating President
Lincoln's prohibition as a mere "paper" blockade. This, however, the
British Government did not choose to do. At this time we were
particularly anxious, in view of the coming International Exhibition, to
stand well with all men and to be entangled in no foreign complications.
Within a fortnight, therefore, of the receipt of the news, there came
out a Royal Proclamation enjoining on all loyal subjects of the British
Crown an attitude of strict neutrality, and solemnly admonishing them
under pain of Her Majesty's displeasure to respect the Federal blockade.
Needless to say, the proclamation awakened no respect whatever for the
blockade. The lecture in the latter part of it was received in the
spirit in which it was issued—as a piece of mere international courtesy;
and those of Her Majesty's loyal subjects who were most affected by the
new situation at once took steps to make the best of it. With due
respect to the pain of Her Majesty's displeasure we all knew that to run
a foreign blockade could never be an offence against the laws of the
realm, nor were we to be persuaded that any number of successful or
unsuccessful attempts to enter the proclaimed ports could ever
constitute a breach of neutrality. Firm after firm, with an entirely
clear conscience, set about endeavouring to recoup itself for the loss
of legitimate trade by the high profits to be made out of successful
evasions of the Federal cruisers; and in Liverpool was awakened a spirit
the like of which had not been known since the palmy days of the slave
trade.
It was a spirit of adventurous commerce savouring of the good old days
of the French wars, when a lad might any day be called from the office
to take his place on the deck of a privateer, and when daring spirits
were always ready to steal away from a convoy and run the risk of
capture on the chance of getting the cream of the market. The risks a
blockade-runner had to face were much the same, for as no Government
pretends to interfere with its citizens if they choose at their peril to
trade in the face of a blockade, so no protection or redress is given
them if they are caught red-handed. After official notification of
blockade any neutral vessel attempting to leave or enter a blockaded
port forfeits its neutrality and places itself in the position of a
hostile belligerent. The blockading force is entitled to treat such a
ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any means recognised in
civilised warfare to drive off, capture, or destroy her. A crew so
captured may be treated as prisoners of war, and their vessel carried
into the captor's port, where after condemnation by an Admiralty court
she becomes his prize. Nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a
single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a
pirate.
Such was the exciting prospect our seamen and supercargoes had before
them as they sailed for the Southern ports. At first, of course, the
risk was not thought very great; the Confederate ports were so many and
far between, and the Federal navy so weak and unorganised, that vessels
proceeded very much as if there was no blockade at all. The consequence
was that as early as June 1861, barely two months after the declaration
of the blockade, several English vessels had been seized and condemned.
Almost every week after that brought news of fresh captures; on the
other hand, so many ships succeeded in getting through the widely
scattered cruisers, that the business still went on in the old clumsy
way. We had neither of us learnt our trade then; the Federal captains,
in hopes of fat prizes, cruised without order and chased wide, leaving
ports open for new-comers, while our best idea of minimising risks was
to send out old unseaworthy slugs which we could well afford to lose.
During the whole of the first year of the war it was in this amateurish
way that things went on. A pretty regular tale of captures came in, and
among the reports the mails brought home began to be whispered stories
of daring attempts, and hair-breadth escapes, that set many a youngster
kicking very impatiently under his desk. There came stories, too, of
exasperated or ill-conditioned Federal captains who had behaved with
unwarrantable bluster or tyranny to captured crews, and these began to
awaken in mercantile circles a partisan leaning towards the South, which
certainly did not exist at the beginning of the war. Some of us, it must
be confessed, were growing oblivious of our duty as loyal subjects and
of the solemn admonitions of the proclamation of neutrality, and for not
a few the profit of making a successful run began to be seasoned with
the pleasure of doing a good turn to the South. It is all bygone now;
runners can laugh over the rough knocks they sometimes got, and
blockaders at the weary dance they were led. But in those days the ill
feeling was very strong, and in the midst of all the fermenting
irritation dropped the grating surprise of the _Trent_ affair.
Captain Wilkes, a Federal naval officer commanding the West India
station and engaged in blockade duties, took upon himself, with more
zeal than law, to board the _Trent_, a British mail steamer, on the high
seas, and seize from its deck two Confederate diplomatic agents who were
passengers from Havana, accredited respectively to the French and the
British Governments. There is no doubt that the English nation was
prepared to make any sacrifice to resent this outrage, and feeling ran
very deep while we waited for the answer to our demands for redress. It
cannot be denied that people on the other side made themselves a little
ridiculous and irritating over our perfectly reasonable request for the
surrender of the prisoners. Captain Wilkes was the hero of the hour, and
blustering exultation over England the tune of the street. But in the
White House heads were cooler, and in due course full reparation was
made. Still the "spoiled child of diplomacy" was not made to
apologise—she barely expressed regret, and her omission of this
international courtesy, combined with the extravagances of her press,
confirmed in many Englishmen their inchoate partisanship for the South.
Such was the state of things when, one day early in the year 1862, one
of the partners in the house where I was serving called me into his
room. After telling me how he and a few friends had purchased a steamer
to have a try at the blockade, he asked me if I would care to go as
supercargo?
The answer was not doubtful. It was a stroke of luck far better than I
had any right to expect at my age (for I was but twenty-one), and
needless to say I embraced my fortune with alacrity.
"By all means," said I, "if I am not too young."
My chief was good enough to say that he thought I was _not_ too young,
and so I was fairly launched in my career as a blockade-runner.