"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"Edward F. Devens,
"Acting Volunteer Lieutenant, Commanding."
"Wilmington, N.C., January 27, 1864.
"My Dear Sir: In Bermuda I took command of a splendid merchant steamer, called the Ranger, for the passage to Wilmington. I had very heavy weather and no observation for the first three days out. On the fourth got sights which put me at noon eighty miles southeast from lightship off Frying Pan Shoals. I went ahead full speed in heavy sea to sight the light early in the night, but the Yankees had put it out, and fearing the drift of the Gulf, I determined to run inshore and anchor during the next day (10th instant) and ascertain my position accurately, which I did, and landed my passengers and baggage. On the morning of the 11th, at 12.25 a.m., I got underway and ran along the coast for the bar near Fort Caswell. When eight miles from the fort I made the Minnesota about one mile off, and whilst observing her motions the pilot (who had charge of the ship) suddenly sheered her inshore, and in an instant she was in the breakers. I made every effort to get her off, but unavailingly, so you see a couple of turns of a wheel in the hands of a timid man lost a fine ship and a valuable cargo. She was destroyed. I was loaded for Government.
"Your obedient servant,
"George W. Gift."
The "Spunkie."
Many blockade runners were given corresponding names, Owl, Bat, Badger, Phantom, Lynx, but none seemed to be more appropriate than that given to a little toy steamer from the Clyde named Spunkie. She was not fast but she managed to make several successful runs. When I saw her in Nassau I could scarcely believe that this little cockleshell of a boat had crossed the North Atlantic and had run through the blockading fleet. The commander of the Federal cruiser Quaker City reported to Admiral Lee February 13, 1864, that he had discovered the Spunkie ashore at daylight on the 9th on the beach a short distance west of Fort Caswell, but he could not determine whether she was attempting to run in or run out. Two tugs belonging to the blockading fleet made repeated but ineffectual efforts to float the Spunkie and she still lies near Fort Caswell. As the Spunkie was loaded with blankets, shoes, and provisions for the Confederate soldiers, there is no doubt she was trying to come into the river by the Western Bar when she ran ashore.
The "Phantom."
This was a new Confederate steamer built abroad on the most approved lines for the Confederate Government. She was a handsome iron propeller of about 500 tons, camouflaged, as were all blockade runners, to decrease her visibility. The usual method was to paint the hull and smoke funnels a grayish green to correspond with the sea and sky and the coast-line sand dunes, which often made them invisible even at close range. There were two Federal cruisers most dreaded by the blockade runners because of their great speed: the Connecticut and the Fort Jackson. The former made many prizes. At daylight, the morning of September 23, 1863, when about fifty miles east by north of New Inlet, the Phantom was discovered by the Connecticut standing to the eastward. The Phantom was bound from Bermuda for Wilmington with a very valuable cargo of Confederate arms, medicine, and general stores. She had evidently made a very bad landfall too far to the northward and eastward at daylight and was running away from the land until darkness would help her into Cape Fear River, when she would face the fleet again. But the Connecticut gave chase at her top speed and after four hours' vain effort to escape, the Phantom suddenly hauled in and ran ashore near Rich Inlet, where she still lies. The crew escaped in their own boats, after setting the Phantom on fire. The Federals attempted to put out the fire and salve the Phantom, but failed to do so.
The "Dare."
This steamer was built abroad in 1863 for the Confederate Government. At daybreak on the morning of the 7th of January, 1864, the cruiser Montgomery saw the Dare with Confederate colors flying near Lockwood's Folly, heading for Cape Fear. The Montgomery and her consort the Aries gave chase, the latter heading off the Dare, which endeavored to escape, but being in range of the guns of both pursuers for about four hours, she headed for the beach, and was stranded at 12.30 p.m. a little to the northward of North Inlet, near Georgetown, S.C. The weather was very stormy and the surf very high so that one of the Federal boats, in attempting to board the Dare, was capsized and her crew made prisoners by the Confederates behind the sand dunes. Other Federal boats reached the stranded vessel and set her on fire.