Here Maury’s party took passage, on November 13, on the Cunard Steamer Arabia, a paddlewheel full-rigged ship plying between Liverpool and Boston. The ship tumbled about considerably during a great part of the voyage, and Maury was “as seasick and amiable as usual”. The voyage was uneventful, and Liverpool was reached in safety.
On arrival, Maury conferred with Captain James T. Bulloch, C. S. Navy, who had an office with Fraser, Trenholm, and Company, the financial agents of the Confederate government, at No. 10 Rumford Place. After a short stay in Liverpool, he went on to London to a house in Sackville Street which had already been engaged for him, where, according to Morgan, “All day long there would be in front of the house a string of carriages with coronets on their doors, while their owners were paying their respects to the great ‘Lieutenant Maury’”. Early in 1863, Maury established himself at Bowdon, a village about nine miles from Manchester, so that he could be near his son whom he had placed there in the Rose Hill School.
From James Morris Morgan’s “Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.”
C. S. Cruiser “Georgia”
Fitted out for the Confederate States by Maury in England
At the time of Maury’s arrival in England, there were, it appears, eight officers of the Confederate Navy in Europe, who were engaged in the task of securing by whatever means possible the much needed ships for the Confederacy. Captain Samuel Barron, who had been sent over to command the ironclad rams at that time being built by Lairds at Liverpool, was the flag-officer and in actual command, though the duties and responsibilities of the various officers were not very clearly defined and often overlapped.
Maury’s first accomplishment was the purchase, in March, 1863, of a new iron screw-steamer of about 560 tons, which had just been completed at Dumbarton on the Clyde. She was fitted out as a merchant steamer under the name of the Japan, and on April 1, set sail, pretending to be bound for the East Indies. At about the same time a small steamer, the Alar, cleared from New Haven for St. Malo with Commander William Lewis Maury and a staff of officers together with guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The two ships met off Ushant, where the war material was placed on board the larger vessel. Commander Maury, a cousin to M. F. Maury, then commissioned her a Confederate man-of-war with the name Georgia.
The ship at once began a cruise which lasted seven months and resulted in the capture of eight or nine vessels, amounting to a loss of $406,000. After cruising over the South Atlantic and calling at Bahia, Brazil, where she fell in with the Alabama, and at Capetown, she made her way in safety to Cherbourg, France, where she arrived during the night of October 28–29. Here Commander Maury was detached because of ill health, and the ship was refitted. But she was fated not to go out on another cruise. The vessel was not adapted to the service for which she was required; her coal capacity was limited and the consumption of fuel on her was made very large because she lacked great sail-power and always had to chase under steam. She did, however, slip out past the Union ships on guard, and made her way to the Mediterranean to a rendezvous with the C. S. S. Rappahannock on the coast of Morocco. Here her battery, ammunition, and a part of her crew were to be transferred to the other vessel, and she was then to be sold. But the French kept such a close watch on the Rappahannock that she was not able to leave the harbor of Calais, and the Georgia was at last forced to turn about and make her way to Bordeaux. She was then ordered to Liverpool, where on the 10th of May, 1864, she was put out of commission and sold to an Englishman by the name of Edward Bates for about 15,000 pounds. She was then captured in August of that year by Captain T. T. Craven of the U. S. S. Niagara, and sent to Boston, where she was condemned; and afterwards the owner’s claim for damages was disallowed by the Mixed Commission at Washington.
Maury was instructed by the Secretary of the Navy, on June 8, 1863, to purchase another ship. This order, however, did not reach him until two months afterwards, and he was not able to carry it out until the month of November, when he secured a condemned dispatch boat belonging to the Royal Navy. This was the Victor, a screw-steamer of about 500 tons which had been offered for sale at Sheerness. For fear of being stopped, Maury hurried her to sea on the wintry night of November 24, with workmen still on board and with only a few of her intended crew. Her officers joined her in the Channel, where she was commissioned the Rappahannock. Two days later she entered the harbor of Calais under the guise of a Confederate ship in distress. Here the French threw such restrictions about her as to prevent her from even making an attempt to leave port. Some endeavors were made to sell the vessel, but the war came to an end before this could be accomplished and the ship was eventually turned over to the United States. Her commanding officer had considered her a poor ship for commerce destroying, because her machinery took up too much space and her magazine was so large as to leave but little room for crew and provisions. The ship was often referred to as “The Confederate White Elephant”, but she did serve the very useful purpose of keeping two United States war vessels constantly off Calais to prevent her from going to sea.
Maury and the other Confederate agents had great obstacles to meet in securing ships, and probably did as well as possible under the circumstances. Federal agents were constantly on the watch to see that French and British neutrality was strictly observed, and besides Maury and his associates were greatly handicapped by the lack of money for the purchase of vessels and the insufficiency of both officers and their crews. “If I had had money and officers”, wrote Maury, “I could since I have been here have fitted out half a dozen just as good to prey upon the Yankee commerce as the Alabama”.