THE _BANSHEE_ NO. 1
A landmark in marine architecture—The lines of the _Banshee_—Her
crew—Serious defects—Loss of time—Driven back off the
Fastnet—Arrival at Madeira—Northerners and the duties of
neutrals—Southern sympathies—Federal cruisers—Nearing the
Bahamas—Admiral Wilkes—The _Banshee_ runs into
Nassau—Preparing for business—A daring and successful
commander—Engineer Erskine—Tom Burroughs.
After my disappointment it will easily be imagined how anxious I was to
know how my new ship was progressing. On reaching Liverpool my first
care was to visit the yard where she was being built. To my great
delight I found her almost completed, and a marvel of shipbuilding as it
seemed to us then. For the _Banshee_, as she was called, may claim to be
a landmark not only in the development of blockade but also of marine
architecture. With the exception of a boat built for Livingstone of
African fame, she was, I believe, the first steel ship ever laid down.
The new blockade-runner was a paddle boat, built of steel, on
extraordinarily fine lines, 214 feet long and 20 feet beam, and drew
only 8 feet of water. Her masts were mere poles without yards, and with
the least possible rigging. In order to attain greater speed in a
sea-way she was built with a turtle-back deck forward. She was of 217
tons net register, and had an anticipated sea speed of eleven knots,
with a coal consumption of thirty tons a day. Her crew, which included
three engineers and twelve firemen, consisted of thirty-six hands all
told.
Steel ship-building was then in its infancy, and the _Banshee_ was the
first of a fleet that was soon to become famous. There were several
similar steamers already in hand, and although no one could tell how
they would behave when exposed to the great seas of the Atlantic, the
best results were anticipated from the strength and lightness of their
materials. They were expected to develop a buoyancy beyond everything
that had yet been seen, and American naval officers awaited their
arrival on the scene of activity with an interest as great as ours.
The _Banshee_ was ready for sea early in 1863, and I had the
satisfaction of finding myself steaming down the Mersey in the _first_
steel vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic.
Like most first attempts, however, she was far from a success, and by
the time we reached Queenstown she had betrayed serious defects. To
begin with, the speed she developed was extremely disappointing. With
the idea of protecting her boilers from shot, they had been constructed
so low that they had not sufficient steam space, and, worse than this,
the plates of which she was built, being only an 1/8 and 3/16 of an inch
thick, she proved so weak that her decks leaked like a sieve. It was
found absolutely necessary to put into Queenstown and make such
alterations as were possible. Thus three more weeks were lost, and when
at last we were able to put out again it was only to be driven back off
the Fastnet by a south-westerly gale, which swept the _Banshee_ clean
from stem to stern of everything on deck, filled her fore stoke-hole,
and compelled us to return for fresh repairs. Considering how frail the
vessel was, the wonder is, not that the _Banshee_ was driven back, but
that she ever got across the Atlantic at all. Still her next start was
successful, and reaching Madeira without adventure, excepting a close
shave from being run down in the Bay of Biscay by a French barque, she
began her real career as a blockade-runner.
For even here danger began. At this time a great deal of bad blood was
caused by the way in which the Northerners in their efforts to enforce a
blockade were extending the doctrine of the operations permissible to
belligerents. But there is no doubt now that they were perfectly right.
True, the proposition that a belligerent might seize a neutral ship for
attempted breach of blockade thousands of miles away from the blockaded
coast was one that would have been condemned by the old school of
International lawyers as nothing less than monstrous, and by none more
energetically than the great publicists who have so richly adorned the
American bench.
So far were such doctrines from being recognised, that it was generally
held that a vessel making a long ocean voyage might even call at a
blockaded port to inquire if the blockade was still existent, and, no
matter how suspicious her intentions, she was entitled to a warning
before being captured. But it must be remembered that those were the
days of sailing ships, which might have been without any news of passing
events for months. No blockade of any importance had yet been subjected
to the new conditions of steam navigation, and it was unreasonable to
expect that the blockaders would hold themselves bound by rules which
never contemplated the existing state of things. If the Americans were
stretching the theory of blockade, it was only because we were extending
its practice. It was not to be argued that, if we were building a whole
fleet of steamers for the express purpose of defying their cruisers,
they were not justified in trying to intercept them at any point they
chose. From the very outset the voyages of these vessels showed them to
be guilty, and the most barefaced advocate could hardly have maintained
without shame that they were protected by their ostensibly neutral
destination, when that destination was a notorious nest of offence like
Nassau.
Still the new methods were none the less galling to the susceptibilities
of British merchants, who of all men claimed to go and come on the high
seas as they pleased, and every day those engaged in the service became
more pronounced in their Southern sympathies, and louder in their
denunciations of the Northerner's high-handed ways.
In order to economise coal the _Banshee_ was taking the usual course
adopted by sailing vessels. This was the ordinary practice of runners,
and as the Federals grew bolder, stronger, and more exasperated, they
stretched their patrolling cruisers further and further across the
Atlantic, till, a few weeks after the _Banshee_ left Madeira, a Federal
ship of war was actually lying in wait for one of the new runners at the
mouth of Funchal Bay! The moment the British vessel put to sea the
American opened fire upon her as mercilessly as though she were coming
out of Charleston or Wilmington instead of out of a neutral port, and
nothing but superior speed and clever handling saved her from
destruction within sight and sound of neutral territory.
The _Banshee_ having been earlier in the field was more fortunate, but
the voyage was none the less exciting as she neared the Bahamas. The
neighbouring seas were alive with cruisers who, regarding everything
bound for Nassau as _primâ facie_ guilty of an intention to break the
blockade, seized any vessel they had a mind to on the chance of getting
her condemned in the United States Courts. Indeed, the principal centres
of blockade-running were almost as closely invested as the ports of the
Confederate States, and only a few months before the notorious Captain
Wilkes (now promoted to the rank of Admiral for his popular but
unwarrantable conduct in the _Trent_ affair) had been further
distinguishing himself by literally blockading Bermuda with the squadron
under his command.
Although from first to last the British Government showed nothing but
sympathy with the Northern States in the difficult task of their
blockade, and although they never once complained of a decision of the
American Courts, or in any way countenanced the runners, this was going
a little too far. A protest was unavoidable, and considering the
antecedents of Admiral Wilkes the Federal Government could hardly
complain if two British war-ships were ordered to watch the over-zealous
officer. It would appear that at the White House the representations
from St. James's were regarded as reasonable, for after this the
American cruisers kept a more deferential distance; the _Banshee_ at any
rate was able to run into Nassau without being overhauled, and her
arrival there caused a great sensation, as being the first boat
specially built for the service.
Having received the congratulations of my many friends at Nassau upon
possessing so fine a tool to work with, I at once set about getting her
ready for a trip as soon as the nights set in dark enough. For so
vigilant had the blockading force become by this time, that a successful
run was considered practically impossible except on moonless nights.
Invisibility, care, and determination were the secrets of success, and
to this end the _Banshee_ was carefully prepared. Everything aloft was
taken down, till nothing was left standing but the two lower masts with
small cross-trees for a look-out man on the fore, and the boats were
lowered to the level of the rails. The whole ship was then painted a
sort of dull white, the precise shade of which was so nicely ascertained
by experience before the end of the war that a properly dressed runner
on a dark night was absolutely indiscernible at a cable's length. So
particular were captains on this point that some of them even insisted
on their crews wearing white at night, holding that one black figure on
the bridge or on deck was enough to betray an otherwise invisible
vessel.
Perfect as the _Banshee_ looked, when her toilet was complete, I was
even more fortunate in my crew.
For captain I had Steele, one of the most daring and successful
commanders the time brought out. Absolutely devoid of fear, never
flurried, decided and ready in emergency, and careful as a mother, he
was the beau-ideal of a blockade-runner. Already he had served his
apprenticeship to the trade and knew what failure meant, for while in
command of the _Tubal Cain_ he had been captured on his very first trip,
and, after tasting for a short time the hospitality of an American
prison, had been released—richer by the experience, but in no wise
daunted.
The chief engineer, Erskine, too, had seen service, having worked as
second engineer on board the Confederate cruiser _Oreto_, when the
famous Captain Maffitt ran her into Savannah. As the engines of a
blockade-runner are her arm, her success must necessarily in great
measure depend on the qualities of her engineer, and it would have been
hard to find a better man for the task than Erskine. Cool in danger,
full of resource in sudden difficulty, and as steady as the tide, he was
yet capable of fearlessly risking everything and straining to the last
pound, when the word came, in one of those rousing forms of expression
with which old Steele was wont to notify down the engine-room tube, that
the critical moment had come.
For pilot a Wilmington man had been sent out by our agents there, and
was waiting for me at Nassau. He too turned out a jewel. He knew his
port like his own face, and the most trying situations or heaviest
firing could never put him off or disturb his serene self-possession.
For all his duties he had an instinct that approached genius. On the
blackest night he could always make out a blockader several minutes
before any one else; and so acute at last did this sense become, that it
used to be a byword that Tom Burroughs at last got to smell a cruiser
long before he could see her.
Through the ignorance or cowardice of the pilot vessels were frequently
lost, and to obtain a good pilot was as troublesome as it was essential.
The risk they ran was great, for if captured they were never exchanged;
but their pay, which frequently amounted to £700 or £800 a round trip,
was proportionate to the risk.
Thus well equipped and laden with arms, gunpowder, boots, and all kinds
of contraband of war, as soon as the moon was right, the _Banshee_ stole
out of Nassau for the first time to make the best of her way to
Wilmington.