The officers and crew of the Dare escaped to the shore.
The "Bendigo."
In 1863, when the demand for suitable merchant steamers to run the Wilmington blockade could not be met, even at enormous prices, the eager buyers began to bid on the Clyde River steamers. Some of extraordinary speed but of frail construction were lost on the long and often tempestuous voyage across the Atlantic via Madeira and Bermuda, while others succeeded in passing the blockade with almost the regularity of mail boats. Of such was the Bendigo, previously named the Milly. Her description was as follows: Topsail yard schooner Bendigo; steamship of Liverpool, late Milly, 178 tons, built of iron, hull painted green, three portholes on either side fore and aft of paddle boxes. Elliptic stern, carriage and name on same painted white, bridge athwartships on top of paddle boxes; after funnel or smokestack, with steam pipe fore part of same, fire funnel or smoke stack with steam pipe fore part of same; draws eight feet six inches aft and eight feet forward.
I am putting this description (now obsolete) on record because it was a type of many other blockade runners in 1863-64.
The Wilmington Journal of January 11, 1864, described the stranding of the blockade runner Bendigo at Lockwood's Folly Inlet, from which it appears that the wreck of the blockade runner Elizabeth was mistaken by the Bendigo for a Federal cruiser, and in trying to run between the wreck and the beach the Bendigo was stranded. The Bendigo was discovered at 11 a.m. January 4, 1864, by Acting Rear Admiral S.P. Lee on his flagship Fahkee, who attempted with the assistance of the Fort Jackson, Iron Age, Montgomery, and Daylight to haul off the Bendigo, in which they failed because the Confederate batteries on shore drove them off with the loss of the Iron Age, which got aground and blew up. The Bendigo was set on fire and abandoned and her hull may be still visible at Lockwood's Folly Bar.
The "Antonica."
This Confederate blockade runner I remember as a fine ship and very successful. She was of the old American type of passenger and mail boat, 516 tons, known previously as the Herald. So regular and reliable in her runs was she that I recall a remark of one of her officers that it was only necessary to start her engine, put her on her course for either Wilmington or Nassau, lash her wheel, and she would go in and out by herself.
She ran several times in and out of Charleston, where she was registered carrying 1,000 to 1,200 bales of cotton and some tobacco. She was commanded on her last voyage by Capt. W.F. Adair, who reported that on the night of the 19th of December, 1863, the Antonica made the land at Little River Inlet, the dividing line between North Carolina and South Carolina, and stood to the eastward of Lockwood's Folly Inlet and waited until the moon set at 2.30 a.m., when he attempted to run the blockade at Cape Fear Bar, but in trying to pass the blockader Governor Buckingham was forced ashore on Frying Pan Shoals, and he and his crew, twenty-six all told, were captured while making for the beach in their own boats.