running the blockade 4

running the blockade 4

Were it only for the glimpse it gives of the state of the mercantile

marine thirty years ago, my first voyage would be worth relating. Those

who do not know how things were before the Plimsoll Act had made a

revolution in Merchant Shipping would hardly believe what a man even in

my position was expected to undergo without complaint.

 

The steamer that had been purchased as a blockade-runner, like most

others at this time, was quite unfit for the purpose. To explain that

she was a second-hand Irish cattle boat will convey to those who have

voyaged in St. George's Channel a fair idea of what she was. Those who

have not must understand that the average quality and condition of such

craft are very low, and the _Despatch_ was not above the average. Her

boilers were nearly worn out; her engines had been sadly neglected; and

added to this, she drew far too much water for the hazardous entrances

of the blockaded ports. But so indifferent were the ships at this time

composing the blockading squadrons, so insufficient their numbers, and

so inefficient their crews, that during the first year small sailing

vessels of light draught and ordinary trading steamers were employed for

the purpose of running the blockade.

 

As has been shown, anything was thought good enough for a

blockade-runner then, and no time was lost in getting a cargo on board

the _Despatch_. In choosing this there was not much difficulty. In

January a vessel flying the Confederate colours had put into Liverpool;

she had run the blockade out and was thus able to bring us, not only the

latest news of the Federal fleet, but also full information of the kind

of cargo that would be most welcome in the Southern ports.

 

The chief requirements were war materials of every sort, cloth for

uniforms, buttons, thread, boots, stockings, and all clothing,

medicines, salt, boiler-iron, steel, copper, zinc, and chemicals. As it

did not pay merchants to ship heavy goods, the charge for freight per

ton at Nassau being £80 to £100 in gold, a great portion of the cargo

generally consisted of light goods, such as silks, laces, linens,

quinine, etc., on which immense profits were made. At this time there

were no mills, and practically no manufactories in the Confederate

States, so their means of production were _nil_. With the progress of

the war their need of war material increased so sorely that in 1864 the

Confederate Government limited the freight-room on private account, and

prohibited the importation of luxuries on the ground that if allowed to

come in and be purchased the resources of the country would thereby be

absorbed.

 

As soon as her lading was complete a start was made. And what a start it

was! It almost takes one's breath away in these be-legislated days to

think what the _Despatch_ must have looked like as she dropped down the

Mersey. Her owners had taken advantage of their timely information to

load her down, as low as she would float, with a cargo consisting of

ponderous cases and barrels of war material as well as light goods; her

deck was piled as high as the rail with coal, which had to be taken for

the voyage to Nassau, so as to avoid calling at any intermediate port;

and she steamed out to brave the Atlantic with barely one foot of

freeboard to her credit.

 

Fortunately at the outset the weather kept fair, or my career must have

had a very premature end; but thanks to an unusually fine February we

wallowed along pretty comfortably, till we had made some 400 miles to

the south-west of Ireland. Here, however, through the carelessness of

the engineers, the water was allowed to get so low in the boilers that

the crowns to the furnaces of one of them were "brought down." This

means that only by a miracle was an explosion escaped, and that the

_Despatch_ was entirely incapacitated from proceeding on her voyage.

There was nothing to do but to put back for repairs, under one boiler,

and we laid her head for Queenstown, thanking our stars it was no worse.

 

It was three weeks before we could get to sea again, and then it was

only to find ourselves once more on the brink of destruction. Before we

had passed the Azores we came in for a terrific gale, which our

overladen vessel was in no condition to meet; she speedily sprang a

leak, so serious that in a very short time four of the eight furnaces

were extinguished and the firemen were toiling at the rest up to their

knees in water. For hours we looked for her to founder at any moment, as

the gray breakers came rolling upon us, but somehow we managed to keep

her afloat, and in due course were ploughing through the sunny waters of

New Providence, and came to rest in the pretty harbour of Nassau.

 

In those days I was a confirmed somnambulist, and one stormy night

considerably astonished the officer of the watch by suddenly appearing

on the bridge at midnight in bare feet and sleeping attire. Gripping him

by the arm I yelled, "For God's sake respect the spars," and turning on

my heel returned to my cabin along the slippery deck, with the steamer

pitching and rolling in half a gale of wind. Of course the man thought I

was mad, but was too astonished to seize me; perhaps it was fortunate he

did not do so, as to have been suddenly awakened in such a situation

might have been anything but pleasant. I have for many years given up

this dangerous habit. My last escapade occurred a long time ago, when

one afternoon on board a P. & O. steamer, while taking a siesta, I

suddenly jumped through the upper half door of my deck cabin and

appeared in very light attire, to the astonished gaze of some fifty

passengers who were on the quarter-deck. Fortunately a friend who was

travelling with me managed to clasp me round the waist before I could

jump overboard, and conducted me to my cabin none the worse, except for

a skinned nose and barked shins. My fellow-passengers, however, were

evidently suspicious regarding my condition of mind, and looked very

much askance when I appeared at dinner, thinking no doubt that I was a

lunatic and my friend my keeper.

 

If that voyage had been almost enough to extinguish all the ardour I had

for the life before me, Nassau was enough to set it well aflame again.

The very thought of the place and of the exciting life there in those

days, through the brief fever of its prosperity, sets my fancy tingling

even now.

 

Those few short years of extravagant importance—so sudden, so fitful, so

completely passed away—are like a dream, and it seems almost impossible

to revive a picture of what Nassau was when it found itself the base of

operations against the great blockade. For centuries the little town had

slumbered in complete obscurity. Depopulated and abandoned in the old

days by the Spaniards, it had been occupied in Stuart times by

Englishmen, and became a haunt of buccaneers. Then followed a century or

so when it was a counter for diplomatists, and buccaneers settled down

into wreckers, scraping together hard-earned living from the hurricanes'

leavings, and filling up the dull months between the stormy seasons with

a little fruit raising and sponge fishing. Thus ingloriously had it

faded into the obscurest of colonial capitals, with a population of some

3000 or 4000 souls. There lived and ruled the Governor of the Bahamas,

and there lived the Chief Justice and the Bishop; these with their

modest following, and the officers of a West India regiment and a few of

the leading merchants and their families, made up almost all there was

of society! Little more eventful ever broke the monotony of their feuds

and friendships than the visit of one of the ships forming the West

Indian squadron. Their Lilliputian politics went on from year to year,

undisturbed and uncared for; there was nothing to mark their place in

the world but a dusty pigeon-hole somewhere in the Colonial Office,

which was filled, and emptied, and filled again. Every one was poor and

every one lazily hopeless of any further development; a few schooners

that came and went at infrequent intervals sufficed for all the trade

there was, and the whole air of the sleepy settlement had been one of

indolent acquiescence in its own obscurity.

 

Then past all expectations came the war, and gold poured into its

astonished lap. When first I saw the low line of houses nestling in the

tropical vegetation of their gardens a change had already taken place.

The blockade had been on foot a bare year, but even then the quiet

little port had asserted its new importance and was overflowing with the

turmoil of life. Many influential firms connected with the Southern

States, and also English ones, had established agencies there, and

almost every day steamers managed by those agents left the harbour to

try their luck at evading the blockade or arrived with cargoes of cotton

from the beleagured ports. Of course, seeing that Nassau was only some

560 miles from Charleston and 640 from Wilmington, and that, moreover,

the chain of the Bahama islets extended some hundred miles in the

direction of those ports, thus providing the extra protection of neutral

territory for that distance, Nassau was _par excellence_ the base for

approaching the blockaded Atlantic ports of the South. Bermuda was its

rival, but only in a lesser degree, as it was further off, and its

conveniences as regards communication and accommodation were less. It is

some 690 miles distant from Wilmington, the course being somewhat to the

northward of west, and in the autumn especially it was seldom possible

to get over without encountering a gale of wind. The one thing necessary

for the blockading vessels being speed, their hulls were of the lightest

description; this, coupled with the fact that they were always loaded

down deep with coal, made a gale of wind an even worse enemy to

encounter than a Federal cruiser.

 

Havana was the best base for the Gulf ports, but as New Orleans was

captured early on in the war, Galveston and Mobile were the only two

blockaded ports that could be approached from it; and seeing the

difficulty there was in procuring cotton at those places and of

disposing of inward cargoes, the trade done with them was a flea-bite

compared with that from Charleston and Wilmington. At one time the trade

of these two ports assumed very large proportions; the number of vessels

employed in it was astonishing, and no sooner was one sunk, stranded,

burnt, or captured than two more seemed to take her place.

 

Of Southern firms Messrs. Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. did the largest

business, as they were not only engaged largely on their own account in

blockade-running enterprises, but they were also agents for the Southern

States Government. Their representative in Nassau, Mr. J. B. Lafitte, a

charming man in every respect, occupied a most prominent position,—in

fact more prominent than that of the Governor himself, and certainly he

was remunerated better.

 

After Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. came the English firm of Alex. Collie

and Co., at that time one of great repute, represented by my friend L.

G. Watson, and they from time to time were possessed of a large fleet of

runners commanded mostly by naval officers. After them came the house I

represented, which from first to last owned some fifteen steamers; and

after them a number of small firms, owning perhaps one, possibly two,

boats apiece, so that in the aggregate the number of boats and the

capital employed was enormous.