CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF SHIPS—CAPTURE OF THE LAFAYETTE—DECREE OF THE ADMIRALTY COURT ON BOARD THE ALABAMA IN HER CASE, AND IN THAT OF THE LAURETTA—THE CRITICISMS OF THE NEW YORK PRESS—FARTHER PROOF OF THE ROTARY NATURE OF THE WIND—THE LAURETTA CAPTURED—THE CRENSHAW CAPTURED—THE NEW YORK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CRIES ALOUD IN PAIN—CAPTURE OF THE BARON DE CASTINE, AND THE LEVI STARBUCK—CAPTURE OF THE T. B. WALES—LADY PRISONERS.
The day after the gale recorded in the last chapter, we set all hands at work repairing damages—the carpenters fishing, and the boatswain and his gang refitting the broken main-yard; the gunners putting their battery in order, the sailmaker repairing sails, and the old signal-quartermaster “breaking out” his signal-lockers, which had been invaded by the sea-water, and airing his flags. The latter was enabled, by this time, to make quite a display of Yankee flags, from his signal-halliards—the Alabama having captured seventeen ships in six weeks. As the Yankee ships now began to wear, out of pure patriotism, (though they were out of the war, and profitably chasing the honest penny,) the biggest sort of “flaunting lies,” there were several bagsful of these flags.
We began now to overhaul sails again. From the 16th to the 20th of October, we chased and boarded nine, all of which were neutral! We were, in fact, in an American sea—the Gulf Stream being the thoroughfare of American and West Indian commerce to Europe—and yet the American flag was beginning to disappear from it. Such of the Federal ships as could not obtain employment from the Government, as transports, or be sold under neutral flags, were beginning to rot at the wharves of the once thrifty sea-ports of the Great Republic. Our “nautical enterprise” was beginning to tell on the enemy, and if we had had the ability to imitate Massachusetts, in the war of the first revolution, in the way of putting forth armed cruisers, to prey upon the enemy’s commerce, the said enemy would not have had so much as a rope-yarn upon the sea, in the course of twelve months. But at the time of which I am writing, the Alabama and the Florida were the only two Confederate ocean cruisers afloat.
On the 21st of October, we observed in latitude 39° 35′, and longitude 63° 26′, and on that day, we made our first capture since the gale. We were lying to, as usual, when a large ship was descried, in the north-west, running in our direction. Though the wind was very fresh, she had her royals and fore-topmast studding-sails set, and was, in consequence, running before the wind, with great speed. I shook the reefs out of my own topsails, and prepared to set the topgallant-sails if it should be necessary, and filled away, and moved toward the path of the stranger as she approached, with the English colors at my peak. The fine, large ship, as she ran down to us, presented a beautiful picture—all the more beautiful because we knew her to be Yankee, although she had not yet shown her colors.
We had become now very expert in detecting the nationalities of ships. I had with me a master’s mate—Evans—who had a peculiar talent in this respect. He had been a pilot out of Savannah, and had sailed in the Savannah, privateer, at the beginning of the war. He escaped the harsh treatment, and trial for piracy, which, as the reader may recollect, were the fate of the prisoners captured in that little vessel, by being absent in a prize at the time of her capture. He afterward joined me at Liverpool. Whenever I had any doubt about the nationality of a ship, I always sent for Mr. Evans, and putting my telescope in his hand, I would say to him, “Look at that ship,” pointing in the given direction, “and tell me to what nation she belongs.” A glance of a minute or two was all he required. Lowering his glass at the end of this time, he would say to me, “She is a Yankee, sir,” or, “She is not a Yankee,” as the case might be; and if she was not a Yankee, he would say, “I think she is English,” or French, or Dutch, or whatever other nation to which he supposed her to belong. He sometimes failed, of course, in assigning their proper nationality to neutrals, but his judgment seemed to amount to an instinct, with regard to the question, Yankee, or no Yankee. When he pronounced a ship a Yankee, I was always certain of her. I never knew him to fail, in this particular, but once, and that can scarcely be said to have been a failure. He once mistook a St. John’s, New Brunswick-built ship, for an enemy; and the ships built in the British Colonies, on the Yankee border, are such counterparts of American ships, that it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other.
The ship which was now running down for us was, as I have said, a picture, with her masts yielding and swaying to a cloud of sail, her tapering poles shooting skyward, even above her royals, and her well-turned, flaring bows—the latter a distinctive feature of New York-built ships. She came on, rolling gracefully to the sea, and with the largest kind of a “bone in her mouth.” She must have suspected something, from our very equivocal attitude in such weather, and in such a place; but she made no change in her course, and was soon under our guns. A blank cartridge brought her to the wind. If the scene was beautiful before, it was still more so now. If she had been a ship of war, full of men, and with hands stationed at sheets, halliards, and braces, she could not have shortened sail much more rapidly, or have rounded more promptly and gracefully to the wind, with her main topsail aback. Her cloud of canvas seemed to shrivel and disappear, as though it had been a scroll rolled up by an invisible hand. It is true, nothing had been furled, and her light sails were all flying in the wind, confined to the yards only by their clew-lines, but the ship lay as snugly and conveniently for boarding, as I could desire. I frequently had occasion, during my cruises, to admire the seamanship of my enemies. The Yankee is certainly a remarkable specimen of the genus homo. He is at once a duck, and a chicken, and takes to the water, or the land, with equal facility. Providence has certainly designed him for some useful purpose. He is ambitious, restless, scheming, energetic, and has no inconvenient moral nature to restrain him from the pursuit of his interests, be the path to these never so crooked. In the development of material wealth he is unsurpassed, and perhaps this is his mission on this new continent of ours. But he is like the beaver, he works from instinct, and is so avid of gain, that he has no time to enjoy the wealth he produces. Some malicious demon seems to be goading him on, in spite of himself, to continuous and exhausting exertion, which consigns him to the tomb before his time, leaving a “pile” of untouched wealth behind him.
The prize, upon being boarded, proved to be the Lafayette, from New York, laden with grain, chiefly for Irish ports. We learned from newspapers captured on board of her, that news of our capture of the Brilliant and Emily Farnum off the Banks of Newfoundland, had reached the United States, and, as was to be expected, I found, when I came to examine the papers of the Lafayette, plenty of certificates to cover her cargo. In fact, from this time onward, I rarely got hold of an enemy’s ship, whose cargo was not certificated all over—oaths for this purpose being apparently as cheap, as the much-derided custom-house oaths, that every ship-master is expected to take, without the least regard to the state of the facts. Upon examination of these certificates, I pronounced them fraudulent, and burned the ship.
As the burning of this vessel, with her cargo nicely “covered,” as the shippers had hoped, with British Consular seals and certificates, seemed to warm up the Northern press, and cause it to hurl fresh denunciations of “piracy” against me, I will detain the reader, a moment, from the thread of my narrative, to look a little into the facts. The reader has already been told that I held a regular prize-court on board the Sumter. I did the same thing on board the Alabama, never condemning a ship or cargo, when there was any claim of neutral property, without the most careful, and thorough examination of her papers, and giving to the testimony the best efforts of my judgment. I had every motive not to offend neutrals. We were hoping for an early recognition of our independence, by the principal powers of the earth, and were covetous of the good-will of them all. I had, besides, the most positive instructions from Mr. Mallory, our Secretary of the Navy, to pay the utmost attention and respect to neutral rights.
Referring to the records of “The Confederate States Admiralty Court, held on board the Confederate States steamer Alabama, on the High Seas,” I find the following decree entered, in the case of the Lafayette.