We entered the Mona Passage, lying between St. Domingo and Porto Rico, after nightfall, but the moon was shining sufficiently bright to enable us to get hold of the small islands of Mona and Desecho, and thus grope our way in safety. The currents in this strait being somewhat uncertain, the navigation is treacherous when the weather is dark. Early on the next morning, we were off the Bay of Samana, and were running with a flowing sheet along the coast of St. Domingo. I had approached the Mona Passage with much caution, fully expecting to find so important a thoroughfare guarded by the enemy, but there was nothing in the shape of a ship of war to be seen. The enemy was too busy blockading the Southern coasts to pay much attention to his commerce. In the course of the morning, we boarded a Spanish schooner, from Boston, bound for the old city of St. Domingo, from which we received a batch of late newspapers, giving us still further accounts, among other things, of the preparation of the Banks’ expedition, about which all New England seemed, just then, to be agog.
The great Massachusetts leader had been given carte blanche, and he was making the best possible use of it. He was fitting himself out very splendidly, but his great expedition resembled rather one of Cyrus’ or Xerxes’, than one of Xenophon’s. The Boston papers dilated upon the splendid bands of music, the superb tents, the school-marms, and the relays of stud-horses that were to accompany the hero of Boston Common. But the best feature of the expedition was the activity and thrift which had suddenly sprung up in all the markets of New England, in consequence. The looms, the spindles and the shoemakers’ awls were in awful activity. In short, every man or boy who could whittle a stick, whittled it, and sold it to the Government. The whalemen in New Bedford, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard were in especial glee. They were selling all their whaling ships, which were too old, or too rotten for further service, to the Government, for transports, at enormous prices. Many a bluff old whaler that had rode out a gale under the lee of an iceberg at the Navigators’ Islands, or “scraped her keel on Coromandel’s coast,” forty years before, was patched and caulked and covered over with pitch and paint, and sold to an ignorant, if not corrupt, army quartermaster, for as good as “bran new.” No wonder that the war was popular in New England. There was not only negro in it, but there was money in it also.
Filling away from the Spanish schooner, which we requested to report us, in St. Domingo, as the United States steamer Iroquois, we continued our course down the island. It was Sunday, and the day was fine. The crew was dressed, as usual, for muster, and what with the ship in her gala-dress of awnings, and glitter of “bright-work,” the island, the sea, and the weather, a more beautiful picture could not well have been presented to the beholder. In the distance were the blue, and hazy hills, so fraught with the memories of Columbus, and the earlier Spanish explorers. Nearer to, was the old town of Isabella, the first ever built in the New World by civilized men, and nearer still was the bluff, steep, rock-bound coast, against which the most indigo of seas was breaking in the purest and whitest of foam. The sailors had thrown themselves upon the deck in groups, each group having its reader, who was reading aloud to attentive listeners the latest war-news, as gleaned from the papers we had received from the Spanish schooner; and the officers, through whose hands the said newspapers had already passed, were smoking and chatting, now of Columbus, and now of the war. Presently the shrill cry of “sail ho!” came ringing from aloft; and the scene on board the Alabama shifted almost as magically as it does in a theatre. Every man sprang to his feet, without waiting for an order; the newspapers were stuck away in cracks and crannies; the helm was shifted, to bring the ship’s head around to the proper point for chasing, and studding-sails, and kites were given simultaneously to the wind.
When we began to raise the spars and sails of the chase above the sea, from the deck, there was a general exclamation of “Yankee!” The tapering royal and sky-sail masts, with the snowiest of canvas, told the tale, as they had told it so often before. A run of a few hours more brought us up with the American bark Parker Cooke, of, and from Boston, bound to Aux Cayes, on the south side of the island of St. Domingo. If the Cooke had been chartered, and sent out for our especial benefit, the capture could not have been more opportune. The Alabama’s commissariat was beginning to run a little low, and here was the Cooke provision-laden. We had found, by experience in the Sumter, that our Boston friends put up the very best of crackers, and ship-bread, and sent excellent butter, and cheese, salted beef and pork, and dried fruits to the West India markets; nor were we disappointed on the present occasion. Both ships were now hove to, under short sail, within convenient boating distance, and the rest of the day was consumed in transporting provisions from the prize. It was sunset before we concluded our labors, and at the twilight hour, when the sea-breeze was dying away, and all nature was sinking to repose, we applied the torch to the Cooke.
As we filled away, and made sail, I could not but moralize on the spectacle. Sixty years before, the negro had cut the throat of the white man, ravished his wife and daughters, and burned his dwelling in the island of St. Domingo, now in sight. The white man, in another country, was now inciting the negro to the perpetration of the same crimes against another white man, whom he had called brother. The white man who was thus inciting the negro, was the Puritan of New England, whose burning ship was lighting up the shores of St Domingo! That Puritan, only a generation before, had entered into a solemn league and covenant, to restore to the Southern man his fugitive slave, if he should escape into his territory. This was the way in which he was keeping his plighted faith! Does any one wonder that the Alabama burned New England ships?
We began now to receive some “returns” of the effect of our late captures upon Northern commerce. The papers captured on board the Cooke were full of lamentations. Our pious brethren did not confine themselves to the forms set down by Jeremiah, however, but hissed their execrations through teeth grinding with rage. I will not treat my readers to any of these specimens of the art Philippic, but will confine myself to a few business excerpts instead, taken indiscriminately from the New York and Boston papers.
Boston crieth aloud.
“Advances on Marine Insurance.—In consequence of the destruction caused at sea by the privateer steamer Alabama, the officers of the insurance companies of Boston have fixed the present war rates on different voyages as follows:—To the north of Europe, 4@5 per cent.; Mediterranean, 5@6; India, 4½; Gulf ports, 4; California gold steamers, 4; West India risks, 5; coastwise, ½@1½. These rates are liable to be altered according to the necessary requirements of the times, consequent upon the unusual hazards to which commerce is now exposed.”
New York responds to the cry of Boston.
“The damaging effect of the Alabama’s raid on our shipping upon the maritime interests of this port were as conspicuous to-day as yesterday. It was next to impossible for the owner of an American ship to procure freight unless he consented to make a bogus sale of his ship.”