One of the regular passenger and freight boats which ran between New Orleans and Galveston before the war was named Atlantic. She became a famous blockade runner under her original name, which was changed later to Elizabeth.
I think she was commanded for several voyages by the celebrated Capt. Thomas J. Lockwood of Southport and Charleston, whose capable brother-in-law, George C. McDougal, was her chief engineer. Mr. McDougal was a man of fine qualities, quiet and retiring in his demeanor. He made in various steamers sixty successful runs through the blockade. For more than twenty-five years after the war I enjoyed the privilege of his intimate confidences, and I have no hesitation in saying that he was to my mind the most remarkable man who had been engaged in blockade running.
On the 19th of September, 1863, the Elizabeth sailed from Nassau with a general cargo, mostly steel and saltpeter, bound for Wilmington, but through some unknown cause ran ashore at Lockwood's Folly, twelve miles from Fort Caswell. The captain set her on fire and burned her on the 24th, the crew escaping to the shore. A man who gave his name as Norris or Morris was captured, second officer on the Douro, stranded October 12, 1863, and he told the commander of the cruiser Nansemond that he was a Federal spy and that he was on the Elizabeth when she was stranded, and he exhibited eight ounces of laudanum and two ounces of chloroform which he said he bought in Nassau to put in the whisky and water of the firemen of the Elizabeth and of the Douro so as to cause the capture of these vessels, but he did not explain why the Elizabeth went ashore while he was in her.
The "Georgiana McCaw."
About the year 1878 there flourished in Wilmington the Historical and Literary Society, composed of about fifty eminent citizens of education and refinement. In those days our representative men found pleasure and relaxation from the drudgery of business or the strain of professional life in the congenial company which assembled for mutual benefit once a month in the lecture room of the Presbyterian Church on Orange Street. Such men as Doctor Wilson, father of the President, Doctor DeRosset, Alfred Martin and his son E.S. Martin, who sometimes represented opposing views, Doctor Wood, Edward Cantwell, Doctor Morrelle, Alexander Sprunt, Henry Nutt, and many others, engaged in learned discussions of subjects suggested by the title of this organization.
On a certain occasion one of the gentlemen named, to whose patriotic ardor we were almost wholly indebted for the closure of New Inlet and the consequent benefit to Cape Fear commerce, rose in his usual dignified and impressive manner with an air of extraordinary importance and mystery. Said he, "Mr. Chairman, I hold in my hands a relic of prehistoric times, cast up by the heaving billows off Federal Point, formerly known as Confederate Point. It is a piece of corroded brass upon which is inscribed a legend as yet indecipherable; in all probability it long antedates the coming of Columbus."
A curious group immediately surrounded the learned member with expressions of awe and admiration, and after several speeches had been made, by resolution unanimously adopted, Mr. E.S. Martin and two other members were entrusted with the precious relic for its elucidation by conferring with the antedeluvian societies of the North.
At the following monthly meeting Mr. Martin reported for his committee that their efforts to identify the relic through reference to archæological societies in the North had been futile, but that a profane Scotchman had informed them that the piece of metal was no more than a part of the bow or stern escutcheon of the stranded blockade runner Georgiana McCaw, the palm tree in the center surrounded by the motto "Let Glasgow Flourish," being the coat of arms of Glasgow,[1] Scotland, the home port of the said blockade runner. Alas! it was only another case of Bill Stubbs, his mark, but we never took the antedeluvians of the North into our confidence about it.
The official report of Acting Master Everson, U. S. Navy, commanding the Federal cruiser Victoria, dated off Western Bar, Wilmington, N.C., June 2, 1864, addressed to the senior officer of the blockading squadron, is as follows, with reference to the stranding of the Georgiana McCaw: