After dark George Forrest swam ashore and bribed a boatman to put him aboard his vessel again with five gallons of a vile brand of whisky. His fellow conspirators pulled him and his purchase in through a berth deck port, and the crew proceeded to hold high carnival. When the watch below was called the boatswain was knocked down with a belaying pin and an officer who tried to quell the disturbance was saluted with oaths and every kind of missile within reach.
The captain was immediately notified, and ordered a beat to quarters. The officers appeared armed and charged forward, assisted by the sober portion of the crew, and after a sharp fight succeeded in securing the worst of the mutineers. Captain Semmes had the drunken sailors drenched with buckets of cold water until they begged for mercy. Forrest was identified by a guard from the shore as the man who bought the liquor, and he was placed in double irons and under guard.
Captain Semmes had said to people on shore that the Alabama would go to sea during the night. But she did not go, and early the next morning the stars and stripes were floating outside the harbor at the masthead of the steam sloop San Jacinto, mounting fourteen guns.
“We paid no sort of attention to the arrival of this old wagon of a ship,” writes Semmes in his memoirs. Nevertheless, it must be recorded that he beat to quarters and kept the Alabama close under the guns of the French fort in the harbor.[2] He might be able to outsail the San Jacinto, but he knew very well that one or two of her broadsides would be very apt to send the Alabama to the bottom, in case Captain Ronckendorff should take it into his head to violate the neutrality of a French port. Moreover, his crew were hardly in a condition either of mind or body to meet a determined enemy.
The captain of the San Jacinto refused to receive a pilot or come to an anchor, because his vessel would then come within the twenty-four hour rule, and the Alabama would be permitted that length of time to get out of reach when she chose to depart, before the San Jacinto, according to international law governing neutral ports, would be permitted to follow her. During the day Governor Candé sent a letter to Captain Ronckendorff warning him that he must either come to anchor and submit to the twenty-four hour rule, or keep three miles outside the points which formed the entrance to the harbor. Being well aware that the governor had correctly stated the law governing the case, Captain Ronckendorff readily promised acquiescence.
Public sentiment in Martinique among the white population was almost unanimously favorable to the South, and while the law was thus enforced to the letter as against the Federals, practically every white person in the port stood ready to give Captain Semmes any assistance which might enable him to escape from his ponderous adversary. The crew of the Alabama spent the 19th of November in various stages of recovery from the debauch and fight of the previous night, and repairing and painting occupied the time of some of them. In the afternoon a French naval officer went on board and furnished Captain Semmes with an accurate chart of the harbor. Towards night the captain of the Hampden, an American merchant ship lying in the harbor near the Alabama, in company with Captain Mellen, were rowed out to the San Jacinto, bearing a letter from the United States consul to Captain Ronckendorff, informing him in regard to the situation ashore. The news of their departure was not long in reaching the Alabama. Suspecting that some code of signals was being arranged, Captain Semmes determined to take time by the forelock. He asked for a government pilot, who was promptly furnished, and just at dusk the Alabama hoisted anchor and steamed toward the inner harbor. The evening was cloudy. Darkness came on early, and rain began to fall. All lights on board were extinguished or covered, and having passed out of sight of the Hampden, the course was altered and the Alabama ran out through the most southerly channel.
When the captain of the Hampden returned to his vessel a little after eight o’clock he immediately sent up three rockets in the direction in which the Alabama was supposed to have gone. The San Jacinto at once ran under a full head of steam to the south side of the harbor, and searched up and down with her crew at quarters until after midnight. At daybreak two of her boats were taken on board, one of which had spent the night in the southern side of the harbor and the other in the northern side. Nobody had seen anything of the Alabama.
People on shore solemnly assured the San Jacinto’s officers that the Alabama had not escaped, but was hiding in some obscure part of the bay, to await the departure of her enemy. The whole harbor was therefore explored by the San Jacinto’s boats, establishing the fact that beyond a doubt the Alabama was gone.
In a postscript to his report to the navy department Captain Ronckendorff says: “I could find out nothing of the future movements of the Alabama.” Nor could anybody else. That was a secret which was kept locked in the breast of her commander. It was very rarely that the lieutenants in her own ward room knew where the vessel would be twenty-four hours ahead.