The following story was told me by the veteran blockade runner George C. McDougal:
"When the Yankees ran the Kate out of New Smyrna, Fla., we had to run across light and leave Capt. Thomas Lockwood, who had gone to Charleston, behind. The command devolved on Mr. Carlin, first officer. We got the ship into Nassau Saturday night. On the following day, Sunday, the British mail steamer appeared off Nassau with the new Governor of the Bahamas on board, but owing to a heavy sea on the bar she could not cross, and accordingly ran down to the west end of the island and to smoother water in order to land the Governor. During the day a number of prominent inhabitants of Nassau came aboard the Kate and asked if the captain would go down to the west end and bring the Governor up. Captain Carlin told them that they were quite welcome to the ship if she could be got ready in time, which would depend upon the chief engineer. He immediately consulted with me and we decided that as the people of Nassau had been very kind to us, the Kate being a favorite, we would try to accommodate them at once. As we had arrived after midnight on Saturday, and, not wishing to work on Sunday, we had not blown the boilers out. The water was hot, and I told the captain I would be ready in an hour's time or less. I started the fires immediately and in a few minutes the committee went on shore to gather their friends and to send off refreshments. In a short time gunboats began to crowd alongside with the aforesaid refreshments, both solid and liquid, the latter as usual predominating in the shape of cases of champagne, brandy, etc.
"When the guests were all on board we hove up the anchor and faced the bar. A tremendous sea was running, and at times our topgallant forecastle was under water. We worked out, however, and hauled down the coast for the west end. In a short time the refreshments began to work on the company, especially on the mate. Captain Carlin being afraid that the small anchor would not hold the ship, ordered the mate to get the large anchor from between decks to the gangway, carry the chain from the hawse pipe along the side of the ship by tricing lines and shackle it to the anchor. I noticed that the mate was almost incapable from the aforesaid refreshments, and I said to him, 'You will lose that anchor,' to which he replied, 'I know what I am about.' Presently the ship took a roll down into the trough of the sea, and overboard went the anchor. When it struck bottom the ship was going twelve or fourteen miles an hour and the sudden jerk started the chain around the windlass, and the way that seventy fathoms of chain flew around the windlass and out of the hawse pipe made the fire fly. It looked as if half a dozen flashes of lightning were playing hide and seek between the decks. With a crack like a pistol shot the weather bitting parted and the end of the chain went out of the hawse pipe to look for the anchor.
"We soon made the bay at the west end and ran alongside the mail steamer and let go our anchor, but found to our disappointment that the Governor had gone to town in a carriage sent for him by the officials. After spending a pleasant hour in exchanging visits between the officers of the two steamers, our guests in the meantime partaking of refreshments, we hove up the anchor and started back toward Nassau.
"Among our passengers was the gallant Capt. John N. Maffitt, who was then waiting at Nassau to get the Oreto, afterwards named the Florida, out of irons. We had also Captain Whiting, the American consul at Nassau, who asked permission to go down to the steamer to get his dispatches, which was not denied him, although this man was greatly disliked not only by Confederate sympathizers but by the natives, having, as the Irishman said, winning ways to make everybody hate him. During the run back the consul, overcome by his numerous potations, lay down with his dispatches and was soon asleep. When we aroused him at our destination the dispatches were missing, whereupon he accused Maffitt of stealing them, resulting in a grand row all round. The dispatches were restored to him on the following day, their disappearance being caused by a practical joke on the part of the Confederates. We delivered our passengers in a very shaky condition.
"On Monday morning, having turned out bright and early to start work, our attention was attracted to the shore by a noisy and excited group of negroes gathered around the flagstaff of the American consul, gesticulating and pointing to the top of the flagstaff, from which, to my astonishment, was flying a brand new Confederate flag. It soon appeared that some one, said to be a Confederate sympathizer, and whom every one believed to be Maffitt, who was always ready for a joke, had climbed the flagstaff during the night, carrying up with him a Confederate flag and a bucket of slush. The halyards were first unrove, next the Confederate flag was nailed to the staff, and last of all as the joker descended, he slushed the staff all the way to the ground, making it impossible for any one to ascend to remove the ensign which was so hateful to our friend the consul. When Whiting came down to the consulate after breakfast and took in the situation, he performed a war dance around that pole which was one of the most interesting spectacles ever witnessed by the Confederates in Nassau. He then employed a number of Her Majesty's colored subjects with cans of concentrated lye to remove the slush, and, after great difficulty, one of them succeeded in reaching the top of the staff and removed the Confederate flag, replacing the halyards as before; but this was not the last of it. On the following morning a United States man-of-war appeared off the harbor, and when the consul in full official rig took his seat in the stern of his gig he found on reaching the cruiser that he was hard and fast by the nether extremities, some North Carolina tar having been previously applied by the aforesaid Confederate sympathizer to the seat of his gig. Of course these annoyances created a great deal of feeling, and a down-east shipmaster, desiring to show his spite, made a fool of himself by hoisting the American flag over the British flag, the latter being union down, intending it as an insult, of course, which was immediately noticed on shore, and in a short time several thousand shouting, howling British negroes were lining the water front looking for boats and threatening to drown the American captain who had taken such a liberty with their beloved flag. Before they could carry out their purpose, however, a man-of-war's launch shot out from the British gunboat Bulldog with a file of marines, and, boarding the brig, ordered the flags hauled down and the English flag detached, took the captain in the launch and pulled to the government wharf and immediately shoved him into the calaboose, from which confinement he was not released until the next day, with the admonition that if he remained on board his ship he would have no need of a surgeon. He took the hint and was seen no more on shore.
"On Thursday we were bound for the northwest channel with our regulation cargo of 1,000 barrels of gunpowder and arms and accouterments for 10,000 men. We ran into Charleston on Saturday night and on Sunday morning the Confederate quartermaster pressed every horse and dray in Charleston to haul the cargo to the railroad station. The congregations of the churches along Meeting and King Streets probably derived very little benefit from the sermons delivered that sacred day, as the roar of the drays and wagons was incessant all day Sunday and Sunday night. As fast as a train was loaded it was started out for Johnston's army, and a conductor of a train told me afterwards that the soldiers broke open the cases of rifles on the cars and distributed the firearms and accouterments from the car doors. It may be said that the Kate was a most important factor in the battle of Shiloh. Johnston's army was a mass of undisciplined men with single and double barrel shotguns, old time rifles, and anything else in the way of firearms that they could bring from home. They had nothing suitable to fight with. The three cargoes of war stores, therefore, carried in by the Kate, one by the Mary Celeste to Smyrna and the fourth cargo carried by the Kate into Charleston, actually equipped Johnston's army, immediately after which came the battle of Shiloh. One thousand barrels of gunpowder was a dangerous shipment to run through the Federal blockade, and it was a great relief to us when the Confederacy established powder mills in Georgia, and our powder cargoes were changed to niter for the mills."
CAPTAIN JOHN WILKINSON.