Kelly, Piet & Co. Baltimore
My fifth lieutenant was Mr. John Low, of Georgia, a capital seaman, and excellent officer.
Galt, my old surgeon, had accompanied me, as the reader has seen, as did also First Lieutenant Howell, of the marines. Myers, the paymaster of the Sumter, was, unfortunately for me, in prison, in Fort Warren, when the Alabama was commissioned—the Federal authorities still gloating over the prize they had made, through the trickery of the Consul at Tangier, of one of the “pirate’s” officers. In his place I was forced to content myself with a man, as paymaster, who shall be nameless in these pages, since he afterward, upon being discharged by me, for his worthlessness, went over to the enemy, and became one of Mr. Adams’ hangers-on, and paid witnesses and spies about Liverpool, and the legation in London. As a preparatory step to embracing the Yankee cause, he married a mulatto woman, in Kingston, Jamaica, (though he had a wife living,) whom he swindled out of what little property she had, and then abandoned. I was quite amused, when I saw afterward, in the Liverpool and London papers, that this man, who was devoid of every virtue, and steeped to the lips in every vice, was giving testimony in the English courts, in the interest of the nation of “grand moral ideas.” This was the only recruit the enemy ever got from the ranks of my officers.
To complete the circle of the ward-room, I have only to mention Mr. Miles J. Freeman, the chief engineer of the Sumter, who was now filling the same place on board the Alabama, and with whom the reader is already acquainted; Dr. Llewellyn, an Englishman from Wiltshire, who having come out in the Alabama as surgeon when she was yet a merchant-ship, had been retained as assistant surgeon; and Acting Master Bullock, brother of the captain already named in these pages. My “steerage officers,” who are too numerous to be named individually, were a capital set of young men, as were the “forward officers.” Indeed, with the exception of the black sheep in the ward-room, with Federal propensities, to whom I have alluded, I had reason to be satisfied with my officers of all grades.
I must not forget to introduce to the reader one humble individual of the Alabama’s crew. He was my steward, and my household would not be complete without him. When I was making the passage from Nassau to Liverpool, in the Bahama, I noticed a pale, rather delicate, and soft-mannered young man, who was acting as steward on board. He was an obedient, respectful, and attentive major-domo, but, unfortunately, was rather too much addicted to the use of the wine which he set on the table, every day, for the guests. Poor Bartelli—I thus designate him, because of his subsequent sad fate, which the reader will learn in due time—did not seem to have the power of self-restraint, especially under the treatment he received, which was not gentle. The captain was rough toward him, and the poor fellow seemed very much cowed and humbled, trembling when spoken to harshly. His very forlornness drew me toward him. He was an Italian, evidently of gentle blood, and as, with the Italians, drinking to intoxication is not an ineradicable vice, I felt confident that he could be reformed under proper treatment. And so, when we arrived at Terceira, I asked Bartelli how he would like to go with me, as steward, on board the Alabama. He seemed to be delighted with the proposal. “There is one understanding, however,” I said to him, “which you and I must have: you must never touch a drop of liquor, on board the ship, on duty. When you go on shore, ‘on liberty,’ if you choose to have a little frolic, that is your affair, provided, always, you come off sober. Is it a bargain?” “It is, Captain,” said he; “I promise you I will behave myself like a man, if you will take me with you.” The Captain of the Bahama had no objection, and Bartelli was duly installed as my steward. I found him, as I had expected, a capital servant. He was faithful, and became attached to me, and kept his promise, under strong temptation; for there was always in the cabin-lockers of the Alabama the best of wines and other liquors. He took care of my linen like a woman, washing it himself when we were at sea, and sending it to some careful laundress when in port. I shall, perhaps, astonish a great many husbands and heads of families, when I tell them, that every shirt-button was always in its place, and that I never had to call for needle and thread under difficulties! My mess affairs never gave me the least trouble. My table was always well supplied, and when guests were expected, I could safely leave the arrangements to Bartelli; and then it was a pleasure to observe the air, and grace of manner and speech, with which he would receive my visitors and conduct them into the cabin. Poor Bartelli!
The day after the Bahama left us was cloudy, and cheerless in aspect, with a fresh wind and a rough sea. The ship was rolling and tumbling about, to the discomfort of every one, and confusion still reigned on board. Below decks everything was dirt and disorder. Nobody had as yet been berthed or messed, nor had any one been stationed at a gun or a rope. Spare shot-boxes and other heavy articles were fetching way, and the ship was leaking considerably through her upper works. She had been put together with rather green timber, and, having been caulked in England, in winter, her seams were beginning to gape beneath the ardent heats of a semi-tropical climate. I needed several days yet, to put things “to rights,” and mould the crew into a little shape. I withdrew, therefore, under easy sail, from the beaten tracks of commerce; and my first lieutenant went to work berthing, and messing, and quartering, and stationing his men. The gun-equipments were completed, and such little alterations made as were found necessary for the easy and efficient working of the battery, and the guns were sealed with blank cartridges, and put in a proper condition for being loaded promptly. We now devoted several days to the exercise of the crew, as well at general, as division, quarters. Some few of the guns’ crews had served in ships of war before, and proved capital drill-sergeants for the rest. The consequence was, that rapid progress was made, and the Alabama was soon in a condition to plume her wings for her flight. It only remained to caulk our upper works, and this occupied us but a day or two longer.
I was much gratified to find that my new ship proved to be a fine sailer, under canvas. This quality was of inestimable advantage to me, as it enabled me to do most of my work under sail. She carried but an eighteen days’ supply of fuel, and if I had been obliged, because of her dull sailing qualities, to chase every thing under steam, the reader can see how I should have been hampered in my movements. I should have been half my time running into port for fuel. This would have disclosed my whereabouts so frequently to the enemy, that I should have been constantly in danger of capture, whereas I could now stretch into the most distant seas, and chase, capture, and destroy, perfectly independent of steam. I adopted the plan, therefore, of working under sail, in the very beginning of my cruise, and practised it unto the end. With the exception of half a dozen prizes, all my captures were made with my screw hoisted, and my ship under sail; and with but one exception, as the reader will see hereafter, I never had occasion to use steam to escape from an enemy.
This keeping of the sea, for three, and four months at a time, had another great advantage—it enabled me to keep my crew under better drill, and discipline, and, in every way, better in hand. Nothing demoralizes a crew so much as frequent visits to port. The sailor is as improvident, and incapable of self-government as a child. Indeed he is regarded by most nations as a ward of the state, and that sort of legislation is thrown around him, which is thrown around a ward in chancery. The moment a ship drops her anchor in a port, like the imprisoned bird, he begins to beat the bars of his cage, if he is not permitted to go on shore, and have his frolic; and when on shore, to carry our simile still further, he is like the bird let out of the cage. He gives a loose rein to his passions, and sometimes plunges so deeply into debauchery, that he renders himself unfit for duty, for days, and sometimes weeks, after he is hunted up and brought on board by the police, which is most frequently the manner in which his captain again gets possession of him. Such is the reckless intemperance into which some of the regular old salts plunge, that I have known them to go on shore, make their way straight to a sailor-boarding-house, which is frequently a dance-house, and always a grog-shop, give what money they have about them to the “landlord,” and tell him to keep them drunk as long as it will last, and when they have had the worth of it in a good, long, big drunk, to pick them up, and send them off to their ship! The very d—l is to pay, too, when a lot of drunken sailors is brought on board, as every first lieutenant knows. Frequently they have to be knocked down, disarmed of the dangerous sheath-knives which they wear, and confined in irons until they are sober. When that takes place, Jack comes out of the “Brig,” his place of confinement, very much ashamed of himself; generally with a blackened eye or two, if not with a broken nose, and looking very seedy in the way of apparel, as the chances are that he has sold or exchanged the tidy suit in which he went on shore, for some ’long-shore toggery, the better to enable him to prolong that delightful drunk of his. It was quite enough to have such scenes as these repeated once in three or four months.
When I had put my ship in a tolerable state of defence, and given a little practice at the guns, to my crew, I turned her head toward her cruising ground. It so happened that this was not very far off. Following Porter’s example in the Pacific,—I mean the first Porter, the father of the present Admiral in the Federal Navy,—I resolved to strike a blow at the enemy’s whale-fishery, off the Azores. There is a curious and beautiful problem—that of Providence feeding the whale—connected with this fishery, which I doubt not will interest the reader, as it did the writer of these pages, when it first came under his notice. It is because of that problem, that the Azores are a whaling station. The food which attracts the whale to these islands is not produced in their vicinity, but is carried thither by the currents—the currents of the ocean performing the same functions for the finny tribe, that the atmosphere does for the plants. The fishes of the sea, in their kingdom beneath the waters, have thus their highways and byways, as well as the animals upon the land, and are always to be found congregated where their great food-bearers, the currents, make their deposits. Animalculæ, infusoria, small fishes, minute crustacea, and shell-fish found on the algæ, or floating sea-weed, sea-nettles, and other food, are produced in the more calm latitudes, where the waters are comparatively still, taken up by the currents, and transported to the more congenial feeding-grounds of the whales, and other fishes.
Much of this food is produced in the tepid waters of the sea, into which, it is well known, some descriptions of whales cannot enter. The equatorial belt of waters surrounding the earth, between the tropics, whose temperature is generally 80° of Fahrenheit, is as a sea of fire to the “right” whale. It would be as certain death for this species of whale to attempt to cross these waters, as for a human being to plunge into a burning lake. The proof of this is that the “right” whale of the northern hemisphere is never found in the southern hemisphere, or e converso. It is a separate and distinct species of fish. See how beneficent, therefore, the arrangement is, by which the food for these monsters of the deep is transported from the tepid waters, into which they cannot enter in pursuit of it, to the cooler waters in which they delight to gambol. The Gulf Stream is the great food-carrier for the extra-tropical whales of the northern hemisphere. An intelligent sea-captain, writing to Superintendent Maury of the National Observatory, some years before the war, informed him, that in the Gulf Stream, off the coast of Florida, he fell in with “such a school of young sea-nettles, as had never before been heard of.” The sea was literally covered with them for many square leagues. He likened them, in appearance, to acorns floating on the water, but they were so thick as completely to cover the sea. He was bound to England, and was five or six days in sailing through them. In about sixty days afterward, on his return voyage, he fell in with the same school off the Azores, and here he was three or four days in passing them again. He recognized them as the same, for he had never before seen any quite like them; and on both occasions he frequently hauled up buckets full, and examined them. In their adventurous voyage of sixty days, during which they must have been tossed about in several gales of wind, these little marine animals had grown considerably, and already the whales had begun to devour them; for the school was now so much diminished in size, that the captain was enabled to sail through it, in three or four days, instead of the five or six which it had formerly taken him. We see, thus, that the fishes of the sea have their seed-time and harvest; that the same beneficent hand that decks the lilies of the field in garments more superb than those of Solomon, and feeds the young raven, seeds down the great equatorial belt of waters for the fishes; and that when the harvest-time has come, he sends in his reapers and gleaners, the currents, which bind up the sheaves, and bear them off three thousand miles, to those denizens of the great deep, which, perhaps, but for this beautiful and beneficent arrangement, would die of inanition.