I remember the following incident which occurred on this trip: I tried to qualify as a deck hand. Leaning over the vessel's waist, I tried the difficult trick of scooping up a pail of water while the boat was in motion, and while so engaged my watch slipped out of my pocket, and into the water. We were then just below Fort Carroll, mid-stream. The watch is there yet, unless some mermaid has carried it off. I would not have lost it had I not divested it of the chain, to help appearances. On these trips one could not discover that we were not ordinary helpers "before the mast."
Many of the crews on such vessels were of the class called by the negroes "poor white trash," and they were ignorant beyond belief; to test which I once pointed out land to the east as being Ireland, to which they assented. The captains and mates, of course, were not so ignorant.
A strange picture presented itself to me one moonlight night. We were laying in St. Mary's river when a cunna (canoe) came along side, and three or four black men crawled upon our deck and hid themselves down behind the boat's waist. They wanted to go away with us, telling a pitiful tale of oppression, but slavery was yet in vogue there, and so we forced them to go away home.
FILE XVI.
Captain Bailey makes a capture—Sinclair introduces me (as Shaffer) to Mr. Plyle.
The following report was of another capture, by Captain Bailey:
Headquarters, Middle Department,
8th Army Corps.
Baltimore, June 29, 1864.
Col. Woolley,
Provost Marshal.
Colonel.—I have the honor to report that Capt. Wm. Bailey returned to this city this morning bringing three prisoners, and their skiff. They were first seen near James Point, and afterwards were taken on board the schooner "Thos. H. Northern," Capt. Wells; from which schooner Bailey took them along with Capt. Wells, and brought them to this office. I had a conversation with each one separately and then confined them.
George Hull stated that he was in the 9th Virginia Cavalry, from which he deserted some three months since; that he has been in the Confederacy since 1862; that he ran the blockade into Virginia on the schooner "Sarah Elizabeth" from Philadelphia, loaded with an assorted cargo, and landed in the Rappahannock river; that he did not know he was going to run the blockade when he started. A man named Edwards, commanded the schooner.