“‘Who is this Burden?’ he inquired sneeringly. ‘Have you ever seen him?’
“‘I am not acquainted with him; but I have seen him once, when he came on board my vessel,’ replied Captain Wells.
“‘Is he an Englishman—does he look like an Englishman?’
“‘Yes,’ rejoined the captain.
“‘I’ll tell you what,’ exclaimed the pirate, ‘this is a d—d pretty business—it’s a d—d Yankee hash, and I’ll settle it,’—whereupon he proceeded to rob the vessel of whatever he wanted, including Captain Wells’ property to a considerable amount; put the crew in irons; removed them to the Alabama; and concluded by burning the vessel.
“These facts will at once be brought before the British Consul. The preliminary steps have been taken. The facts will also be furnished the Portuguese Consul, who announces his intention of placing them before his Government; and besides whatever action the Italian Consul here may choose to take, the parties in Messina, to whom the property lost on the Lauretta was consigned, will of course do what they can to maintain their own rights. The case is likely to attract more attention than all the previous outrages of the Alabama, inasmuch as property rights of the subjects of other nations are involved, and the real character of Semmes and his crew becomes manifest.
“Some interesting facts are given by Captain Wells in regard to the Alabama, to which, however, we can only make a brief allusion. The officers of the privateer are principally Southern men, but the crew are nearly all English and Irish. They claim that they were shipped by stratagem; that they were told the vessel was going to Nassau, and now they are promised shares in captured property—not only the property taken, but that which is burned, of which Semmes says he keeps an accurate account. The bills are to be paid by the ‘Confederate Government,’ which Semmes, who enforces discipline only by terrorism, declares will soon achieve its independence. The men suppose they are gaining fortunes—though some of them protest against the cheat which has been practised upon them.”
The above is a fair specimen of the average intelligence of Yankee newspapers, on any subject outside of the dirty pool of politics, in which they habitually dabble. I was not quite sure when I burned the Lafayette, that her cargo belonged to the shippers, British merchants resident in New York. The shippers swore that it did not belong to them, but to other parties resident in Ireland, on whose account they had shipped it. I thought they swore falsely, but, as I have said, I was not quite certain. The “Advertiser” sets the matter at rest. It says that I was right. And it claims, with the most charming simplicity, that I was guilty of an act of piracy, in capturing and destroying the property of neutral merchants, domiciled in the enemy’s country, and assisting him to conduct his trade! The reader now sees what estimate to put upon all the other balderdash of the article. I presume, the only thing Admiral Milne, and the British Minister at Washington did, was to wonder at the stupidity of the New York “Commercial Advertiser.” It is scarcely necessary to say, that Captain Wells of the Lauretta, took a “custom-house” oath, when he swore to the account which the “Advertiser” gives of his interview with me, when I burned his ship. It was a business operation with these Yankees to abuse me, and they performed it in a business-like manner—with oaths and affidavits.
Having captured the Lafayette at nightfall, it was as late as ten P. M. before we got through with the business of “robbing” her—robbing her, in spite of all those nicely contrived certificates, and British consular seals—when we set her on fire. In a few hours, she was a mere beacon-light, upon the sea, marking, as so many other fine ships had marked, the track of the “pirate.” Though I have given the reader already a pretty large dose of the meteorology of the Gulf Stream, in which we are still cruising, I cannot forbear to call his attention to other proofs of the rotary character of the winds which prevail along this hot-water river in the sea. From the 2d to the 22d of October, a period of twenty days, the wind had gone nine times entirely around the compass, with the regularity of clock-work. With the exception of the cyclone of the 16th, we had had no regular gale of wind; though the wind frequently blew very fresh, with the barometer sometimes as low as 29.60. These rotary winds were circles of greater or less diameter, obeying the laws of storms, and travelling along in the direction of the current, or about north-east. There was an interval of only a few hours between them, the barometer rising regularly as one circle or whirl departed, and falling as the next approached. I was much struck with the exceeding regularity of the recurrence of this phenomenon. The received impression is, that it is only the great gales, which we call cyclones, or hurricanes, that gyrate. From my observations in the Gulf Stream—and I lay in it, continuously, for something like a month, changing place, in all this time, but a few hundred miles—gyration is the normal condition of the winds in this stream—that even the most gentle winds, when undisturbed by local causes—the proximity of the land, for instance—are gyrating winds, winding around, and around their respective vortices, against the motion of the sun, as we have seen the tendril of the vine to wind around the pole to which it clings.
On the third day after capturing the Lafayette, having chased and overhauled, in the meantime, a number of neutrals, we descried a large schooner, evidently American, bound to the southward, and eastward. We gave chase at once, but as the schooner was to windward of us, a considerable distance, the chase promised to be long, without the aid of steam, and this, for reasons already explained, I was averse to using, though we kept, at all times, banked fires in the furnaces, and warm water in the boilers. The stranger hugged his wind very closely, this being always the best point of sailing with schooners; but this was also the best point of sailing with the Alabama. The reader has seen, that she always put on her seven-league boots, when she had a chance of drawing aft the sheets of those immense trysails of hers. We gained perceptibly, but the wind was falling light, and it was to be feared night would overtake us, before we could bring the chase within reach of our guns. She was still good four miles to windward of us, when I resolved to try the effect of a solid shot from my rifled pivot, on the forecastle. Elevating the gun some ten degrees, we let fly the bolt. It threw up the water in a beautiful jet, within less than half a mile of her! It was enough. The schooner came to the wind, with the Federal colors at her mast-head, and awaited our approach. Upon being boarded, she proved to be the Crenshaw, three days out from New York, and bound for Glasgow, in Scotland.