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CHAPTER XXX.

Naval Affairs, continued.-Necessity of a Navy.-Raphael Semmes.-The Sumter. -Difficulties in creating a Navy.-The Sumter at Sea.-Alarm.-Her Captures. -James D. Bullock.-Laird's Speech in the House of Commons.-The Alabama. Semmes takes Command.-The Vessel and Crew.-Goes to Sea.-Banks's Expedition.-Magruder at Galveston.-The Steamer Hatteras sunk.-The Alabama not a Pirate.-An Aspinwall Steamer ransomed.-Other Captures.-Prizes burned.-At Cherbourg.-Fight with the Kearsarge.-Rescue of the Men.-Demand of the United States Government for the Surrender of the Drowning Men. -Reply of the British Government.-Sailing of the Oreto.-Detained at Nassau.-Captain Maffit.-The Ship half equipped.-Arrives at Mobile.-Runs the Blockade. Her Cruise.-Capture and Cruise of the Clarence.-The Captures of the Florida.-Captain C. M. Morris.-The Florida at Bahia.-Seized by the Wachusett.-Brought to Virginia and sunk.-Correspondence.—The Georgia. -Cruises and Captures.-The Shenandoah.-Cruises and Captures.-The Atlanta.-The Tallahassee.-The Edith.

To maintain the position assumed by the Confederate States as a separate power among the nations, it was obviously necessary to have a navy, not only for the defense of their coast, but also for the protection of their commerce. These States, after their secession from the Union, were in that regard in a destitute condition, similar to that of the United States after their Declaration of Independence.

It has been shown that among the first acts of the Confederate Administration was the effort to buy ships which could be used for naval purposes. The policy of the United States Government being to shut up our commerce rather than protect their own, induced the wholesale purchase of the vessels found in the Northern ports-not only such as could be made fit for cruisers, but also any which would serve even for blockading purposes. There was little shipping of any kind in the Southern ports, and to that scanty supply we were, for the time, restricted.

A previous reference has been made to the Sumter, Commander Raphael Semmes, but a more extended notice is considered due. Educated in the naval service of the United States, Raphael Semmes had attained the rank of commander,

and was distinguished for his studious habits and varied acquirements. When Alabama passed her ordinance of secession, he was on duty at Washington as a member of the Lighthouse Board; he promptly tendered his resignation, and, at the organization of the Confederate Government, repaired to Montgomery and tendered his services to it. The efforts which had been made to obtain steamers suited to cruising against the enemy's commerce had been quite unsuccessful, none being found which the naval officers charged with their selection regarded fit for the service. One of the reports described a small propeller-steamer of five hundred tons burden, sea-going, low-pressure engine, sound, and capable of being so strengthened as to carry an ordinary battery of four or five guns; speed between nine and ten knots, but the board condemned her because she could carry but five days' fuel, and had no accommodations for the crew.

The Secretary of the Navy showed this to Commander Semmes, who said: "Give me that ship; I think I can make her answer the purpose." She was to be christened the Sumter, in commemoration of our first victory, and had the honor of being the first ship of war commissioned by the Confederate States, and the first to display the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy on the high-seas. The Sumter was at New Orleans, to which place Commander Semmes repaired; and, as forcibly presenting the difficulties under which we labored in all attempts to create a navy, I will quote from his memoirs the account of his effort to get the Sumter ready for sea:

"I now took my ship actively in hand and set gangs of mechanics at work to remove her upper cabins and other top hamper, preparatory to making the necessary alterations. These latter were considerable, and I soon found that I had a tedious job on my hands. It was no longer the case, as it had been in former years, when I had had occasion to fit out a ship, that I could go into a navy-yard, with well-provided workshops and skilled workmen, ready with all the requisite materials at hand to execute my orders. Everything had to be improvised, from the manufacture of a water-tank to the kids and cans of the berth-deck messes, and from a gun-carriage to a friction-primer. . . . Two long, tedious months were consumed in making alterations and additions.

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My battery was to consist of an eight-inch-shell gun, to be pivoted amidships, and of four light thirty-two-pounders of thirteen hundred weight each, in broadside."

On the 3d of June, 1861, the Sumter was formally put in commission, and a muster-roll of the officers and men transmitted to the Navy Department. On the 18th of June she left New Orleans and steamed down and anchored near the mouth of the river. While lying at the head of the passes, the commander reported a blockading squadron outside, of three ships at Passe à l'Outre, and one at the Southwest Pass. The Brooklyn, at Passe à l'Outre, was not only a powerful vessel, but she had greater speed than the Sumter. The Powhatan's heavy armament made it very hazardous to pass her in daylight, and the absence of buoys and lights made it next to impossible to keep the channel in darkness. The Sumter, therefore, had been compelled to lie at the head of the passes and watch for some opportunity in the absence of either the Brooklyn or the Powhatan to get to sea. Fortunately, neither of these vessels came up to the head of the passes, where, there being but a single channel, it would have been easy to prevent the exit of the Sumter.

On the 30th of June, one bright morning, a boatman reported that the Brooklyn had gone off in chase of a sail. Immediately the Sumter was got under way, when it was soon discovered that the Brooklyn was returning, and that the two vessels were about equally distant from the bar. By steady courage and rare seamanship the Sumter escaped from her more swift pursuer, and entered on her career of cutting the enemy's sinews of war by destroying his commerce.

Numerous armed vessels of the enemy were hovering on our coast, yet this one little cruiser created a general alarm, and, though a regularly commissioned vessel of the Confederacy, was habitually denounced as a "pirate," and the many threats to destroy her served only to verify the adage that the threatened live long.

During her cruise up to January 17, 1862, she captured three ships, five brigs, six barks, and three schooners, but the

property destroyed formed a very small part of the damage done to the enemy's commerce. Her appearance on the seas created such alarm that Northern ships were, to a large extent, put under foreign flags, and the carrying-trade, in which the United States stood second only to Great Britain, passed rapidly into other hands. The Sumter, while doing all this mischief, was nearly self-sustaining, her running expenses to the Confederate Government being but twenty-eight thousand dollars when, at the close of 1861, she arrived at Gibraltar. Not being able to obtain coal, she remained there until sold.

Captain James D. Bullock, an officer of the old navy, of high ability as a seaman, and of an integrity which stood the test under which a less stern character might have given way, was our naval agent at Liverpool. In his office he disbursed millions, and, when there was no one to whom he could be required to render an account, paid out the last shilling in his hands, and confronted poverty without prospect of other reward than that which he might find in a clear conscience. He contracted with the Messrs. Laird, of Birkenhead, to build a strong steam merchant-ship-the same which was afterward christened "The Alabama" when, in a foreign port, she had received her armament and crew. So much of puerile denunciation has been directed against the builder and the ship, which, in the virulent language of the day, our enemies denominated a "pirate," that the case claims at my hands a somewhat extended notice.

The senior Mr. Laird was a member of the British Parliament, and, because of the complaints made by the United States Government, and the abuse heaped upon him by the Northern newspapers, he made a speech in the House of Commons, in which he stated that, in 1861, he was applied to to build vessels for the Northern Government, first, by personal application, and subsequently by a letter from Washington, asking him, on the part of the United States Navy Department, to give the terms on which he would build an iron-plated ship, "to be finished complete, with guns and everything appertaining." Mr. Laird continued: "On the 14th of August I received another letter from the same gentleman, from which the following is an extract: I have this morning a note from the

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Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, in which he says, "I hope your friends will tender for the two iron-plated steamers.""" Mr. Laird then said that, while he would not give the name of his correspondent, who was a gentleman of the highest respectability, he was willing, in confidence, to submit the original letters to the Speaker of the House or the first Minister of the Crown; that, as "the American Government is making so much work about other parties whom they charge with violating or evading the law, when in reality they have not done so, I think it only right to state these facts."

Those who have listened with credulity to the abuse of the Confederate Government, as well as that of Great Britain, the one for contracting for the building of the Alabama and the other for permitting her to leave a British port, will thus see how little of sincerity there was in the complaints of the United States Government. For more than a generation the British people have been the great ship-builders of the world, and it is a matter of surprise that they should have given respectful consideration to charges of a breach of neutrality because they allowed a merchantman to be built in one of their ports and to leave it without any armament or crew, which could have enabled it, in that condition, to make war upon a country with which Great Britain was at peace.

Referring to the Alabama, as she was when she left the Mersey, Mr. Laird said:

"If a ship without guns and without arms is a dangerous article, surely rifled guns and ammunition of all sorts are equally and even more dangerous. I have referred to the bills of entry in the custom-houses of London and Liverpool, and I find that there have been vast shipments of implements of war to the Northern States through the celebrated houses of Baring & Co.; Brown, Shipley & Co.; and a variety of other names. I have obtained from the official custom-house returns some details of the sundries exported from the United Kingdom to the Northern States of America from the 1st of May, 1861, to the 31st of December, 1862. There were-muskets, 41,500; rifles, 341,000; gun-flints, 26,500; percussion-caps, 49,982,000; and swords, 2,250. The best information I could obtain leads me to believe that one third to a half