THE CONFEDERATE STATES PRIVATEER SAVANNAH, LETTER OF MARQUE No. 1, CAPTURED OFF CHARLESTON, BY THE U.S. BRIG PERRY, LIEUT. PARROTT.
Entered according to act of Congress in the Year 1861 by E K KIMMEL 59 NASSAU ST. N.Y. in the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The Savannah sailed out of Charleston on the night of Sunday, June 2, 1861, and, eluding the Federal frigate Minnesota, went cruising for Northern merchantmen. The schooner was small, and the weather hot. The crew slept on deck that night, and, as was testified in court later on, they were not feeling very well next morning. In fact, “being on a flare-up the night before, not much was said,” even when a sail was seen, and it became certain that the sail “was a Yankee vessel.” Eventually the sail was overhauled. It proved to be the brig Joseph, of Rockland, Maine, Capt. Thies N. Meyer, bound, sugar laden, from Cardenas, Cuba, to Philadelphia. The brig had a crew of six, all told. She was easily taken, and with a prize crew of six men was sent to Georgetown, South Carolina, where she was condemned and sold in the usual form.
Nevertheless, the cruise was not a paying venture, for soon after sending the prize away the Savannah chased the government man-o’-war brig Perry, thinking her another merchantman, and was, in consequence, captured. The Perry turned her over to the Minnesota; the Minnesota towed her into Charleston harbor near enough to let her owners learn of their loss, and then sent her North. At New York the Savannah’s crew was thrown into prison as pirates, and on July 16, 1861, they were indicted for piracy. The printed report of the trial that followed makes an interesting book of 385 pages. The accused as a whole claimed the rights of prisoners of war, but in spite of the plain evidence that they were entitled to such rights, the jury disagreed. Perhaps when one considers the state of the public mind in the North at that time, the wonder is that they were not convicted and hanged.
Having been remanded in irons to prison, the Confederate authorities took up their case. The victory the Confederates had obtained at Manassas enabled them to put a number of Federal prisoners into irons to abide the fate of the Savannah’s crew. The Federal officers so confined included five colonels, two lieutenant-colonels, three majors, and three captains. Mr. Davis sent an envoy with a protest to Washington. Nothing was done about the matter just then.
Meantime, on October 25, 1861, a member of the crew of the privateer Jefferson Davis was convicted on a charge of piracy, and on the 29th three others of the crew were convicted. Nevertheless, on February 3, 1862, all of the alleged pirates, with thirty-four men from the privateer Petrel, were sent to Fort Lafayette as prisoners of war, and the date is of some importance because the change of policy, even though it were compelled by a threat of retaliation, was another official acknowledgment that the government had a very great war upon its hands instead of a local insurrection of no concern to the rest of the world.
Much more interesting than that of the Savannah are the stories of some of the other privateers. The Jefferson Davis, for instance, had a career that approached that of some of the American privateers in 1812. She was built by Northern capitalists in 1854 for a slaver, and was captured on the coast of Africa with many slaves on board, and sent to Charleston. A fine Baltimore clipper she was, and when the war came she was seized and armed with three eighteen-pounders and two twelves. She got out to sea on June 28th, having seventy men before the mast. On July 6th, off Hatteras, she got the brig John Welsh, loaded with sugar. On the same day the schooner Enchantress was captured, and the next day, being but 150 miles from Sandy Hook, she took the schooner S. J. Waring, that was bound to Montevideo with a valuable cargo. The first-named prizes were sent to Southern ports; but William Tillman, a colored man, recaptured the Waring, and one fact connected with the adventure makes the story worth telling.
The Davis placed a prize crew of five men on the Waring, Mr. Montague Amiel, a Charleston pilot, being the prize master. William Tillman, who was the Waring’s cook; Brice Mackinnon, a passenger, and two of the Waring’s seamen were left on board of her, and she was headed toward the South. The Northern men at once made friends with their captors. The negro continued to cook perforce, but he made no objection to the work, and the two Northern seamen volunteered to make the best of a bad streak of luck by helping to work the ship.
But because Tillman knew that he would become a slave as soon as he was carried into a Southern port, he determined that he would never go there, and on the night of July 16, 1861, when fifty miles south of Charleston, he found opportunity to become master of the schooner.
It was at about midnight. Prize Master Amiel was asleep in the cabin, with the prize mate in a nearby berth. The second mate was on deck, but about half-asleep, while one of the Waring’s original crew was at the wheel, and two of the prize seamen were on duty near the bow. Taking the hatchet which he used in splitting wood for the galley stove, the negro killed the prize captain and the two mates, when the Confederate seamen surrendered and agreed to help work the ship back to New York. There was no one on board who understood navigation, but the negro knew enough to lay a course that would bring “the broadside of America in sight,” and after that he followed the coast until he reached New York.