The Sumter now went to Spain, stopping at Cadiz, where she was not cordially received, and from there went to Gibraltar, where, as Semmes says, “the army and navy of Great Britain were with us almost to a man,” while “the Yankee officers of the several Federal ships of war, which by this time had arrived, were kept at arm’s length. No other than the customary official courtesies were extended to them. We certainly did not meet any of them at the club.”
However, if the Sumter’s officers had a good time ashore, they were unable to have one afloat, for the “several Federal ships” that had arrived effectually blockaded her. The work she did and the fate of the ship are thus summed up by Semmes:
“She cruised six months, leaving out the time during which she was blockaded in Gibraltar. She captured eighteen ships, as follows: the Golden Rocket, Cuba, Machias, Ben. Dunning, Albert Adams, Naiad, Louisa Kilham, West Wind, Abby Bradford, Joseph Maxwell, Joseph Parke, D. Trowbridge, Montmorency, Arcade, Vigilant, Eben Dodge, Neapolitan, and Investigator. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to the enemy’s commerce. The property actually destroyed formed a very small proportion of it. The fact alone of the Sumter being upon the seas, during these six months, gave such an alarm to neutral and belligerent shippers, that the enemy’s carrying-trade began to be paralyzed, and already his ships were being laid up, or sold under neutral flags—some of these sales being bona fide, and others fraudulent. In addition to this, the enemy kept five or six of his best ships of war constantly in pursuit of her, which necessarily weakened his blockade, for which, at this time, he was much pressed for ships. The expense to my Government of running the ship was next to nothing, being only $28,000, or about the price of one of the least valuable of her prizes. The Sumter was sold in the course of a month or two after being laid up, and being put under the English flag as a merchant-ship, made one voyage to the coast of the Confederate States, as a blockade-runner, entering the port of Charleston. Her new owner changed her name to that of Gibraltar. She was lost afterward in the North Sea.”
The next cruiser to be considered was named the Florida. She was built at Liverpool under the name of Oreto. The American officials learned, while she was building, that she was of the same model and scantling as the best British gunboats of that day. She had ports for four guns. On February 18, 1862, complaint was made to the British government by the American representative charging that she was building for use as a Confederate cruiser, whereat “orders were given that she be vigilantly watched.” On March 3d she was registered in the name of a member of a Sicilian firm, then in Liverpool, and cleared for “Palermo, the Mediterranean and Jamaica” in ballast. She sailed on March 22d with a crew of fifty men, but she went directly to Nassau, in the Bahamas. When there she appeared as a merchant ship consigned by Fraser, Trenholm & Co., of Liverpool, notorious as Confederate agents, to their Nassau house. Here, on complaint of the United States consul, she was libelled, and there was a farce of a trial in the Nassau court. Of course she was released. It was proved that she had taken on munitions of war, but these had been sent ashore again, and to the mind of the court she was a genuine British merchantman. Meantime her crew asked the British authorities to discharge them, alleging as a reason for the request that they had been deceived when they shipped in her. She had been represented as a merchantman, they said, but it was plain she was a man-o’-war, and they did not want to fight. On this plea they were at once discharged.
On August 2d she cleared for Havana, shipped twenty-two men of the blockade-running class, went to a desolate island called Green Key, and met a vessel that had brought out a first-class English armament of two seven-inch rifles and six six-inch guns. Her new commander was John Newland Maffitt, formerly of the American navy, and one who, because of his good qualities, did not lose his friends there when he forsook the flag. Maffitt was so pressed for men that he worked as a common sailor himself to transfer the arms. In fact, every man on board worked so hard that when one man came down with yellow fever the others took it. The ship reached Cardenas, in spite of losses from the fever. While still ill with the fever, Maffitt was compelled by the authorities to go to Havana.
Finding he should never get a crew there, he decided on the desperate expedient of running over to Mobile and braving the blockade, although he had barely enough men to man the stoke-hole.
The blockaders were sighted on September 4, 1862, and Maffitt, with just one man on deck to steer, hoisted the British flag, and headed directly for the blockaders.
At that time Commander George H. Preble was in charge of the station, and he had the Oneida and Winona under him. Seeing a boat exactly like a British gunboat, and under British colors, and knowing that British gun-boats were frequently sent alongshore to see whether the ports were really blockaded, Preble was deceived. He called his men to quarters and approached the stranger, but did not seem to have been suspicious when he saw that she was running at full speed and had no men on deck. He hailed her when near enough, and got no reply. Then he fired, in rather slow succession, three shots across her bow. As she still kept on he opened on her with a broadside, and the Winona joined in.
The Florida was but 300 yards away, and yet so wretched was the American marksmanship, that the broadsides cut the rigging and tore away the upper part of her bulwarks. One shell did, indeed, pass through and through the Florida near the water-line, to explode beyond her, but it did her no material damage. She passed in clear. The remarks which all the writers on the subject make about the narrow margin of luck in the time fuse of that one shell are not adapted to increase one’s respect for the ability of the gunners. It is a fact, as already noted, that the gunners of the war of 1861 were not to be compared in skill with those of 1812. And this is a subject that cannot be impressed deeply enough on the minds of American readers. For we may shout “Tirez! Tirez toujour!” as the Frenchman did, till we are blind, and still suffer defeat unless we can hit the target when we fire.
As between John N. Maffitt, sitting alone on deck because unable to stand—alone save for the man at the wheel—while his ship made that desperate dash for home, and the Union forces wasting their ammunition on the salt-sea air, one cannot hesitate long in bestowing his sympathy even if Maffitt was an enemy of the flag. It was a most heroic deed on one side and a sorry exhibit of incompetence on the other. On the other hand, when Preble was dismissed the punishment was unjust, for he had done his duty as he saw it. He had given his men all the target practice that the regulations provided. The fault was not in the man, but in the naval regulations that are careful to provide that every man blacks his shoes daily and limit the target practice of the gunners to, say, ten shots a year.