CHAPTER XV.

Cruise of the Alabama.-Questions which arose.-Question whether a Vessel supposed to have committed a Violation of Neutrality should be excluded from the Ports of the Neutral.-Question on the Operation of the Regulations of 31st January, 1862.-Confederate Practice of destroying Prizes.-Cases of the Saxon and the Tuscaloosa.-Regulations of 2nd June, 1864.-Observations on the Practice of Commissioning Tenders.-The Alabama arrives at Cherbourg.— Action between the Alabama and Kearsarge, and Destruction of the former. Question respecting the Rescue of some of the Survivors by the Deerhound.-The Florida and Georgia at Brest and Cherbourg.-The Florida carried off from Bahia.-The Shenandoah.

Ir was, as we have seen, on the 24th August, 1862, that the Alabama hoisted her flag. She cruised for some time off the Azores, then made for the coast of New England, approaching within two days' sail of New York, and touched in November at Martinique. Here she was received, as the Sumter had been, in the character of a Confederate man-of-war; and here, also, she escaped from a Federal cruiser, as the Sumter, under the same commander, had done before. The San Jacinto arrived whilst the Confederate ship lay at anchor in the harbour, and was as unfortunate as the Iroquois in missing a golden opportunity-an opportunity, indeed, of doing a far more important service than the Iroquois would have done had she captured the Sumter. Following the example of the captain of the Iroquois, the commander of the San Jacinto remained off the mouth of the harbour in order to avoid detention; and the Alabama, a faster vessel of far inferior force, slipped away without difficulty during the night. Off Galveston, in January 1863, she engaged and sunk the Federal war-steamer Hatteras, one of the squadron

Chap. XV. employed in the blockade of that port; afterwards visited Jamaica, where she remained five days; proceeded thence to the coast of Brazil; and from Bahia struck across the Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope, which she reached at the end of July. In the neighbourhood of the Cape she remained till September, when she departed for a cruise in the Indian and China seas.

The Federal Government had made vigorous but ineffectual efforts to prevent the admission of the Sumter into neutral ports, on the plea that her employment was piratical. To contend with anything like plausibility in the second and third years of the war that a ship commissioned by the Confederate Government ought to be treated as a pirate, was plainly out of the question. But it was suggested that the Alabama, having been built and sent to sea in violation of the neutrality of Great Britain, ought to be seized if she ventured within British jurisdiction, and ought at any rate to be excluded from our ports, although she was received in those of other neutral nations. Whether the despatch of the Alabama from Liverpool really violated any rule of British or of international law, is at the least a doubtful question. Her arming in Portuguese waters was certainly an offence against Portugal. But there is no doubt that, had the whole series of transactions which finally placed her on the ocean armed, manned, provisioned, and commissioned for war, been within the knowledge of the British Government, and within its power of control, she would never have left the Mersey; and that this was understood or suspected by the Confederate agents is proved by the concealment which masked her true ownership, and by her hurried and clandestine departure. Yet the Government could not have refused to regard her, when once commissioned, as a public ship-of-war, without departing either from the principle of neutrality which Great Britain had adopted in common with every other maritime State, or else from a settled usage, in the

maintenance of which all maritime States have a Chap. XV. common interest. To be neutral it was necessary, as we have seen, to treat the Confederate Government as a Government in matters immediately connected with the war; and, between Governments, it is an established and salutary rule that a commission duly issued by competent public authority incorporates a ship, whatever her previous history, for all purposes, into the armed forces of the Power in whose name and by whose authority the commission runs. That Power assumes the responsibility for all prior claims on her, as well as for all that she may do whilst sailing under its flag; and any act of force exerted against her is exerted directly against that Power. From this it by no means follows that such a vessel may not be excluded, after due warning, either general or special, from the ports of a nation whose neutrality she has been the means of infringing. Every Sovereign has a general right to exclude from his ports either all shipsof-war, or any particular ship, or to impose on admission any conditions he may think fit; although the exclusion of a particular ship would be unjust and offensive unless reasonable grounds could be shown for it, and unless the Sovereign were prepared to apply the same rule indifferently to all Powers, great and small. And the exclusion during war of a vessel belonging to one belligerent for reasons which the neutral was not prepared to apply to the other, would be a breach of neutrality, as well as an act of injustice. It may be added that to exclude an offending ship - whilst it is something short of a downright demand for reparation, and though in itself it may be a proper and reasonable mode of checking offences which could only be directly chastised by war-is a measure likely to be embarrassed by some difficulties. These arise both from the fact that the neutral Sovereign must constitute himself the judge of the question whether there has been an offence or no, and enforces his own judgment by a process which is in

Chap. XV. its nature peremptory, and still more from the circumstances under which hospitality is commonly sought. Stress of weather, injuries sustained at sea or from mere wear and tear, the necessity for repairs, for sustenance, and even for fuel when fuel is indispensable for locomotion, are pleas to which it is hard to turn a deaf ear; and the ordinary hospitalities of a port consist in furnishing these things. These considerations would alone be sufficient to show that to refuse hospitality to a belligerent vessel which has been guilty of some infraction of the laws of neutrality, though it may be the right, can never be treated as the duty, of the neutral. But in truth there is no foundation for such a duty. The belligerent who contrives to arm himself in a neutral port commits no offence against his enemy. His offence is against the neutral Sovereign; and it is for the neutral Sovereign to choose his own mode of resenting it-to accept, if he pleases, an explanation or apology—to confine himself, if he will, to simple remonstrance, or, according to his judgment of the circumstances, to pass it over altogether. He is not answerable to the other belligerent for the exercise of this discretion; nor does he, by exercising it in one way rather than in another, incur a constructive responsibility (which would be merely fictitious) for a connivance or culpable neglect of which he never was in fact guilty.1

1 There is, on the other hand, a recognized duty to restore prizes captured by a vessel which has been fitted out, or has increased her armament, illegally, provided they were captured during the cruise with a view to which the illegal outfit or augmentation was effected, and are brought within the jurisdiction of the neutral Power. The exclusion of all prizes from British ports prevented this question from arising during the late war. Had it arisen, the question whether there had in fact been an illegal outfit would have come before a Court of Admiralty.

It would be erroneous, I conceive, to contend that the taint of illegality, if any, adhering to the Alabama, was ever deposited," as the phrase is, by the termination of her original cruise. She never made but one cruise, which began when she hoisted her flag off Terceira and ended when she struck it off Cherbourg.

I have referred above to the practical difficulties Chap. XV which surround every attempt to deny to ships not actually hostile the ordinary hospitalities of a friendly port. It is, indeed, because the perils and mischances of the sea, to which all are exposed alike, are so many, so capricious, and so tremendous, that even the belligerent cruiser, bent on an errand of hostility, is permitted by universal consent to obtain in a neutral port necessary shelter and the means of prosecuting her voyage. The introduction of steam-power seems to have at once diminished and increased these difficultiesdiminished them by enabling ships to go to sea without waiting for a wind; increased them by making machinery, which is liable to want repairs, a part of the apparatus of navigation, and by rendering cruisers dependent not only on canvas but on coal. These remarks are illustrated by the experience of the late war. During the first few months of it, no restriction appears to have been placed on the coaling of belligerent vessels in neutral ports. But the British Government, in January 1862, issued, as we have seen, a series of regulations designed to prevent the ports of the Empire from being used by either belligerent as cruising stations or for cruising purposes.1 These orders appear to have been enforced with a reasonable degree of strictness; but it must be owned that to enforce them was not always easy a vessel which had obtained repairs and coal sufficient to find her way home could not be prevented from afterwards continuing her cruise; nor could she always be prevented from presenting herself, within the period of three months limited by the orders, at another colonial port where she was a stranger, and getting a fresh supply. Again, the quantity of coal which a vessel requires depends very much on the weather she encounters; head winds and a heavy sea will soon exhaust her stock. And what was to be considered the nearest home port of a Confederate. 1 See above, p. 137.