To the men of the Hatteras I cannot give too much praise. Their enthusiasm and bravery was of the highest order.
I enclose the report of Assistant Surgeon E. S. Matthews, by which you will observe that five men were wounded and two killed. The missing, it is hoped, reached the fleet at Galveston.
I shall communicate to the Department, in a separate report, the movements of myself and my command, from the time of our transfer to the Alabama until the departure of the earliest mail from this place to the United States.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
H. C. Blake,
Lieutenant Commanding.
Hon. Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy, Washington.
Setting aside all the discourteous stuff and nonsense about “a rebel steamer,” and a “piratical craft,” of which Captain Blake, who had been bred in the old service, should have been ashamed, especially after enjoying the hospitalities of my cabin for a couple of weeks, the above is a pretty fair report of the engagement. I am a little puzzled, however, by the Captain’s statement, that he could use but four guns on a side. We certainly understood from all the officers and men of the Hatteras, at the time, that she carried eight guns; six in broadside, and two pivots, just like the Alabama,—the only difference between the two ships being, that the Alabama’s pivot guns were the heaviest.
There is another remark in the report that is quite new to me. I am informed, for the first time, that Captain Blake desired to board me. I cannot, of course, know what his intentions were, but I saw no evidence of such an intention, in the handling of his ship; and Captain Blake must himself have known that, in the terribly demoralized condition of his crew, when they found that they had really fallen in with the Alabama, he could not have depended upon a single boarder. What Captain Blake means by saying that his ship went down, with her pennant flying, I am at a loss, as every seaman must be, to understand. Did he not surrender his ship to me? And if so, what business had his pennant, any more than his ensign, to be flying? But this, I suppose, was a little clap-trap, like his expressions, “rebel,” and “pirate,” thrown in to suit the Yankee taste of the day. Indeed, nothing was more lamentable to me, during the whole war, than to observe how readily the officers of the old Navy, many of whom belonged to the gentle families of the land, and all of whom had been bred in a school of honor, took to the slang expressions of the day, and fell, pell-mell, into the ranks of the vulgar and fanatical rabble that was hounding on the war.
The officers of the Confederate States Navy, to say the least, were as much entitled to be regarded as fighting for a principle as themselves, and one would have thought that there would have been a chivalrous rivalry between the two services, as to which should show the other the most courtesy. This was the case, a thousand years ago, between the Christian and the Saracen. Did it result from their forms of government, and must democrats necessarily be vulgarians? Must the howling Demos devour everything gentle in the land, and reduce us all to the common level of the pot-house politician, and compel us to use his slang? Radicalism seemed to be now, just what it had been in the great French Revolution, a sort of mad-dog virus; every one who was inoculated with it, becoming rabid. The bitten dog howled incessantly with rage, and underwent a total transformation of nature. But our figure does not fit the case exactly. There was more method in this madness, than in that of the canine animal, for the human dog howled as much to please his master, as from rage. The size of the sop which he was to receive depended, in a great measure, upon the vigor of his howling.
But to return to the Alabama and the Hatteras. As soon as the action was over, and I had seen the latter sink, I caused all lights to be extinguished on board my ship, and shaped my course again for the passage of Yucatan. In the meantime, the enemy’s boat, which had been lowered for the purpose of boarding me, pulled in vigorously for the shore, as soon as it saw the action commence, and landed safely; and Admiral Bell, with his three steamers, passed on either side of the scene of action—the steamers having been scattered in the pursuit, to cover as much space as possible, and thus increase their chances of falling in with me. They did not find the Alabama, or indeed anything else during the night, but as one of the steamers was returning to her anchorage off Galveston, the next morning, in the dejected mood of a baffled scout, she fell in with the sunken Hatteras, the tops of whose royal masts were just above water, and from the main of which, the pennant—the night pennant, for the action was fought at night—spoken of by Captain Blake, was observed to be flying. It told the only tale of the sunken ship which her consort had to take back to the Admiral. The missing boat turned up soon afterward, however, and the mystery was then solved. There was now as hurried a saddling of steeds for the pursuit as there had been in the chase of the young Lochinvar, and with as little effect, for by the time the steeds were given the spur, the Alabama was distant a hundred miles or more.