The Federals captured in Texan waters many blockaderunners, while still more escaped. Among the unfortunate ones were the Spanish bark Teriseta; the Major Barbour, of New Orleans; the blockader Cora, off Brazos, by the Quaker City; the schooners Loward and Julia, by the U. S. steamer Chocura; and the schooner Hurley. The Anna Dale was cut out in Matagorda Bay by the boats of the U. S. steamer Penola. She struck the bank, however, and was burned. The blockade running schooners Pet and Annie Sophia were taken in Galveston Harbor by boats crews from the U. S. steamers Princess Royal and Bienville. The noted blockade-runner Will-othe-Wisp, while attempting to get into Galveston on the night of the 3d February, 1865, ran ashore and was wrecked. The U. S. steamer Tennessee captured the British schooner Friendship from Havana, and at the same time another schooner, supposed to have been the Jane, of Nassau, was blown up. The Cayuga captured off the Rio Grande the J. T. Davis, which had run out from Galveston.

All these vessels were laden with cotton, stands of arms, or an assorted cargo.

Others were captured of which we have no record, for blockade-running was brisk and often profitable on the Texan coast, and one letter from an officer on board the blockading fleet mentioned ten blockade-runners in sight safe in harbor, or awaiting an opportunity to run out.

Fighting improvised cotton-clads, manned by untrained crews, against regularly armored and equipped steamers manned by experienced sailors; pitting earthworks, with feeble garrisons and insufficient cannon, against blockading vessels, heavily armed and iron-clad-the success which attended the Confederate operations in Texas waters is remarkable and should be as memorable to their descendants as it was honorable to the brave men who planned and executed the capture of Galveston and who fought the battles of Sabine Pass.

A

CHAPTER XVIII.

ALABAMA WATERS.

MONG the earlier of the Southern States to sever connection with the North, alive and vibrant with the impulse for independence, the possessor of a broad water frontage upon the Gulf of Mexico and its estuaries, and threaded inland with navigable rivers, every political and geographical consideration induced Alabama to take an immediate and intimate interest in the maritime operations of the Confederacy. Her chief city was the second in rank of the great cotton ports of America; it had maintained an increasing and fucrative foreign and coastwise commerce, upon which its fortunes had been principally built; and, whatever might be the fluctuations of war, the contingency that Mobile would become at some time the object of the enemy's attack by sea could no more be overlooked than could the value of the harbor for blockade-running purposes, or the adaptability of the Alabama, Tennessee and Tombigbee Rivers for the movements of inland flotillas. The alert and comprehensive genius of the strong men who founded the Confederate government, and formed its schemes of offence and defence, was quick to take cognizance of the fact that Alabama possessed, upon and within her hills, in vast abundance, the raw materials of wood and iron needed for the creation of ships and their armaments; and that even with the lack of money, of sufficient dock-yard and machine-shop facilities and of an adequate number of trained designers, builders, mechanics and engineers, under which the Confederate States struggled, Alabama would be able to contribute in a very important degree to their enterprises afloat. Her waters were destined to become the theatre of naval conflicts of varying magnitude, culminating in that death-grapple of Titans at the battle of Mobile Bay; of scores of gallant exploits of seamanlike skill and daring; of marine raids by the adventurous hunters and fishermen of these semi-tropical sounds and bayous upon the enemy's transports and tenders, and of that

side play of blockade-running which was a constant accompaniment to the main drama of the war.

The primary location of the seat of the new government at Montgomery, and the presence there of such famous officers of the old navy of the United States as Rousseau, Tatnall, Ingraham, Randolph, Semmes, Farrand, Brent and Hartstene, in consultation with the civil heads of the Confederacy upon ways and means of placing the new flag upon the seas, of course were influential in fixing the consideration of the people of Alabama upon the subject.' Quick upon the seizure by their State authorities of the forts in Mobile Bay on January 12th, 1861, they had mooted this question of ships and guns, and in the nature of things it could nowhere have been more a focus of thought than in the seaport town of Mobile. In his "Memoirs of Service Afloat," Admiral Semmes writes that when he reached there on April 19th, 1861, he found it "in a great state of excitement. Always one of the truest of Southern cities, it was boiling over with enthusiasm; the young merchants had dropped their day-books and ledgers and were forming and drilling companies by night and by day, whilst the older ones were discussing questions of finance and anxiously casting about them to see how the Confederate treasury could be supported."

66

It comes within the domain of those morally well-established facts, the documentary proof of which is missing by reason of the loss of early records, that Alabama, at this opening hour of the struggle, was preparing to do her part for the Southern navy. The first actual evidence we have of the movement in that direction is the signing by the Governor on November 8th, 1861, of a bill which had just passed the Legislature, appropriating $150,000 for the immediate construction of an iron-clad gunboat and ram in the bay or harbor of Mobile. This bill had been framed by the Select Committee on Harbor Defences, had been reported by Mr. Langdon, and had been passed by both houses, and received the Governor's approval within a week. Messrs. L. J. Fleming, P. J. Pillans, Peter Hamilton, and Duke W. Goodman, of Mobile, and Lieut. Johnson, C. S. N., were appointed commissioners to superintend the work of construction and outfit, and special instructions appear to have been laid upon them by the Legislature to proceed with all practicable speed. They partially completed a fighting machine of the type described, and this is, in all probability, the vessel spoken of in the report of the joint Congressional Committee of Investigation into the Navy Department in the autumn of 1862, as an unfinished iron-clad ram turned over to the Confederacy by the State of Alabama, as the State had not authorized of itself any other such ship to be built. The only other ship-of-war which was in the possession of Alabama in 1861 was the Federal revenue cutter

66

1 See chapter III. for details of the organization of the Confederate States navy in Alabama.

Lewis Cass, which on January 31st was surrendered to the State by her commander, Capt. James J. Morrison, of Georgia, and was regularly enrolled in the Confederate navy by a subsequent transfer from the State to the general government. On the 20th of the same month the Mobile Chief of Police seized a small craft, the Isabella, which was loading at one of the city wharves with fresh provisions for the Federal fleet off Pensacola. In May, 1861, Col. Bonner, of Alabama, was announced by the New Orleans Delta to have invented “an iron-clad steam propelling battery for the defence of Mobile harbor, which is much approved by Cols. Hardee and Chase and by Major Leadbetter of the Confederate States army."

The blockade went into force at Mobile, as at other ports of the Confederacy, on May 28th, 1861, and in anticipation of it the harbor was cleared of all shipping under foreign flags. The first blockader to appear upon this station was the frigate Powhatan, under command of Lieut. David D. Porter, who in a communication, of May 28th, to James Magee, the acting British Consul, consented that the Mobile tow-boats should be used in taking out the British merchantmen in port, and added that "it would be better, if it can be done without injury to British interests, to get the ships to sea as soon as practicable." No incident entitled to historical notice marked this cessation of the commerce of Mobile, and from this date until Farragut's attack the port and town passed through three years of closure to marine intercourse, broken only as the low, long, swift ocean racers stole in under the guns of the sentinel fleet, with cargoes of arms, ammunition and stores, and out again with the cotton for which the great mills of Lancashire were waiting. But these were not years of idleness or monotony in these waters. The occasional chase of a blockade-runner by Federal cruisers until the cannon of Fort Morgan stopped the pursuit, the dashes of boat parties upon Federal craft, the strengthening of the fortifications, the work of laying the obstructions in the channel and setting the torpedoes, and the building of the squadron that finally confronted Farragut, made the war a sharp and close reality to the dwellers upon the Mobile shores, the soldiers and the sailors who hereabouts sustained the honor of the Confederate cause.

For some months after the beginning of the war a tolerably regular communication was maintained between Mobile and New Orleans through Mississippi Sound by merchant steamers, but the enemy soon undertook to close this outlet. Early in December 1861, the steamer Anna, engaged in this trade, was made a prize by the gunboat New London, and as this capture was soon afterward followed by that of the P. C. Wallace, another trading steamer, other vessels abandoned a line of travel that it had been found dangerous and unprofitable to pursue.

Actual fighting was opened in the neighborhood on January 29th, 1862, when one of the blockaders chased into Mobile Bay the schooner Wilder, which had run the blockade with a cargo of goods from Havana. Seeing the gunboat approach. Capt. Ward, of the Wilder, set the British colors and beached his vessel. The Federals came up in launches, into which they began to transfer the cargo of their prize, In the meantime word had been sent to Mobile, and Capt. Cottrill, who commanded a company of rangers, hurried to the shore with his men and opened fire upon the launches, which was returned from their howitzers and small arms, and the Federal steamer sent in several rounds of shot and shell. The launches were driven off, but at night a Federal steamer came in and towed the Wilder out. It was claimed by the Confederates that Capt. Cottrill's fire killed twenty-five or thirty of the enemy's party. Nine of their bodies were found upon the beach, and one of their small boats, which was abandoned, was pierced from stem to stern with bullets.

The first occasion of the interchange of the compliments of shot and shell between the beleaguering fleet, the Confederate land defences and the Confederate flotilla, was on the following 3rd of April, when the latter made a reconnoissance down the bay and drew the fire of the Federal gunboats, which they briskly returned but without any injury being accomplished on either side. Having consummated the object of the movement, the Confederate steamers withdrew toward Fort Morgan, and as they were followed by the enemy the batteries of the fort opened on the latter, who were then quick to retire to their stations off the bar. On the night of June 28th the British steamer Ann ran the blockade from London via St. Thomas and Havana, but being discovered by the Federals the next morning before she could reach the protection of the guns of Fort Morgan, her crew deserted her on the approach of two Federal men-of-war, who easily effected her capture. Her officers had endeavored to scuttle the ship, but her water-tight compartments saved her, and thus the Confederacy lost her valuable cargo of arms and war material.

On August 30th the Federal gunboat Winona ran up toward Fort Morgan with a view to dropping shells over Mobile Point upon a Confederate armed vessel lying inside. The latter was in no position for an engagement, but the fort directed so steady a fire upon the Winona as to compel her to beat a hasty retreat. The distance, three and a half miles, was too great for any execution to be done, but the little affair served to demonstrate that Fort Morgan's artillerists had an excellent range of the channel, and the enemy's gunboats were thenceforth somewhat more chary of exposing themselves to their fire. This incident preceded by but five days the perilous and splendid rush of the Florida under Capt. Maffitt, through

1 See chapter upon the career of the Florida.