back leisurely toward Brazil, capturing the B. F. Hoxie, Cairaissanne, David Lapsley, Estelle. George Latimer, Southern Rights, Greenland, Windward, William C. Clark and Zelinda.

The Florida anchored at Bahia, Brazil, Oct. 4th, and found in port the U. S. steam corvette Wachusett, Capt. Napoleon Collins. Relying implicitly upon the protection of a neutral power, Morris drew the loads from his guns and gave his crew liberty on shore by watches. On the night of Oct. 6th he was himself in the town with nearly half the ship's company, leaving her in charge of Lieut. Thomas K. Porter and some eighty officers and men. At three o'clock on the morning of the 7th, the Wachusett rammed her on the starboard quarter, fired two shots from her battery, poured in a volley from small arms and demanded her surrender. The Florida's people on deck replied with pistols and muskets and some fifteen of the crew jumped overboard, of whom nine were either drowned or were killed by being fired upon from the Wachusett, while they were trying to swim to the land. Lieut. Porter surrendered his defenceless ship and the Wachusett towed her out to sea without giving him any chance for communication with Capt. Morris. The only Brazilian vessel present was a small sloop-of-war, and although she and the fort fired a few shots at the Wachusett the latter paid no attention. The Florida was sent to Hampton Roads as a prize.

So gross an outrage upon a neutral government was utterly indefensible and the United States made no attempt to defend it. The demand of Brazil that the Florida be returned intact to her protection at Bahia with all the prisoners on board was conceded, and then to avoid this reparation a contemptible and violent fraud was resorted to. While she was lying in Hampton Roads she was "accidentally" struck by an army transport, and then, to avoid any more such "accidental" collisions, she was moored in a secluded locality above Newport News, and an engineer and two assistants. placed on board. On the morning of Nov. 28th she sank at her moorings, and the United States escaped the humiliation of returning her to Brazil. We have not the space to introduce reports of this disgraceful business, but no fair man can study them without reaching the conviction that the sinking of the ship was an act deliberately committed by those in charge of her in pursuance of instructions or intimations from very high Federal authority. Admiral Porter, who was then in command at Hampton Roads, goes far to confirm this belief by the manner in which he speaks of the affair in his "Naval History of the Civil War." It is tolerably well apparent that the engineer in charge of the ship opened the water-cocks in her hull and purposely left her to go to the bottom.

The captured officers were sent in succession to prison at Point Lookout, Washington and Fort Warren. They were brutally treated and were not set free until Feb. 1st, 1865.

Then they were compelled to sign an agreement to leave the United States within ten days of their release, and were turned into the streets of Boston without a dollar, but managed to secure passage to Europe.

THE CLARENCE, TACONY AND ARCHER.-On May 6th, 1863, the Florida captured, off the Brazilian coast, the brig Clarence, of Baltimore, and converted her into a Confederate cruiser. Lieut Charles W. Read was placed in command, and selected as his subordinate officers from the Florida's complement, Quartermaster Billups, Boatswain's mate Matthewson, and Quarter-gunner Pride, who were made master's mates. Engineer Brown was also taken on board, and 16 men of the Florida's crew. The only armament was a 6-pounder boat howitzer, but with some spare spars Read constructed several Quaker guns that frightened some of the American merchant skippers whom he overhauled. He dipped his colors to the Florida, and squared away north and east. Off Cape Hatteras he captured the first prize, the bark Whistling Wind, bound to New Orleans with army stores. That, and a few more prizes, the Kate Stewart, Mary Alvina and Mary Schindler, were burned, and the Alfred H. Partridge was bonded off the capes of the Delaware, to land the prisoners. The next prize was the fine bark Tacony, and as she was a much swifter vessel than the Clarence, the crew and battery were transferred to her, and the Clarence was destroyed. Read now proceeded along the coast of New England, capturing and burning with immense vigor. His prizes were the Ada, Arabella, Byzantium, Elizabeth Ann, Florence, Goodspeed, Isaac Webb, Z. A. Macomber, Marengo, Ripple, Rufus Choate, Shattemuc, Umpire and Wanderer. On June 25th, 1863, the schooner Archer was captured and converted into a cruiser in place of the Tacony, which was destroyed. Read desired to capture a steamer, make a raid down the coast, and run into Wilmington, N. C.; and learning from captured fishermen that the only armed vessel at Portland, Me., was the revenue cutter Caleb Cushing, he decided that she would be of use to him in the execution of his project. On June 27th he sailed into Portland harbor in his peaceful appearing schooner, without molestation, and after dark he took the cutter by boarding, securing her crew below deck. Going out of the harbor at dawn of the 28th, with the Archer and the Cushing, the wind failed, and the Boston steamer passed in, having on board Capt. Merriman, of the U. S. revenue marine, who had been ordered to Portland to take the cutter in search of the Tacony. The first known in Portland of the cutting-out of the Cushing was Merriman's report that he had seen her going to sea; and Maj. Andrew, commandant at Fort Preble, organized a recapturing expedition of troops and citizens in two steamers, and three tug-boats. At 11 o'clock in the morning they overtook the Cushing and Archer. Read opened fire on them from his

guns, but by making wide detours, they hemmed him in, and kept out of cannon range. He then took to his boats, after setting a slow match to the magazine of the cutter, which soon blew up. Surrounded by the enemy, he surrendered, and they towed the Archer into the harbor. The prisoners were charged with piracy, but were finally exchanged.

THE NASHVILLE.-The C. S. cruiser Nashville, a fine, swift side-wheel steamer of about 1,300 tons burden, was built by Northern owners for the trade between New York and Charleston, and was seized by the Confederate authorities at the latter port when she entered it after the capture of Fort Sumter. She laid idle until it was decided that she should take Messrs. Mason and Slidell on the first stage of their journey to Europe, and when this intention was revoked, she was sent out as a Confederate States ship-of-war with the following officers, all of the naval service: Robert B. Pegram, lieut. commanding; Charles M. Fauntleroy, first lieut.; John W. Bennett, second lieut.; Wm. C. Whittle, Jr., third lieut.; John H. Ingraham, master; John L. Auchrim, surgeon; Richard Taylor, paymaster; James Hood, chief engineer, and midshipmen Dalton, Sinclair, Cary, Pegram, Hamilton, Thomas and McClintock. She was armed with but two 12-pounder brass guns, mounted on her forecastle deck, and her crew never numbered more than forty men. On the night of Oct. 21st, 1861, the ship ran the blockade out of Charleston, and after stopping a few days at Bermuda headed across the Atlantic, and on Nov. 19th captured in the entrance of the British channel the ship Harvey Birch, of New York, homeward bound from Havre. The passengers and crew were taken off and paroled and the ship burned. On the 21st, the Nashville arrived at Southampton, where the prisoners were landed, and enjoyed the distinction of being the first war vessel to fly the flag of the Confederate States in the waters of England.

On Jan. 8th, 1862, the Federal steamer Tuscarora arrived in port, and her commander, Capt. Craven, established so close a watch of the Nashville that he was warned by the government officers to beware of violating the neutrality laws. This blockade of the Nashville continued during the month; but in the last week of January the Tuscarora moved off to the Isle of Wight, and Capt. Pegram demanded of the admiralty that in accordance with the law she be detained in British waters until twenty-four hours after his own vessel had sailed. The rule was enforced on Capt. Craven, and the Nashville went to sea on Feb. 3d, and reached Bermuda on the 20th, where she picked up a pilot, who agreed to take her into Beaufort, N. C. On the passage the schooner Robert Gilfillan, of Philadelphia, was made a prize and burned. The Nashville evaded the blockading ships at Beaufort by a daring trick, and ran in on Feb. 28th. Capt. Pegram found that the Confederate government had sold the vessel to private parties in Charleston, and

he left her at Moorehead City in charge of Lieut. Whittle; but before the new owners could arrive to take possession it became necessary to run the blockade outward to save her from capture by Burnside's expedition. This feat was gallantly accomplished by Whittle under a heavy fire from the enemy, on March 17th. Finding it impossible to get into Charleston through the blockading fleet, he took the ship to Georgetown, S. C., and turned her over to the purchasers, Fraser, Trenholm & Co. They employed her in running the blockade, and on her first trip to Nassau she was placed under the British flag and her name changed to the Thomas L. Wragg. As a blockade-runner the steamer was exceedingly successful, and although several times sighted by Federal ships got away from them by her speed; but in the summer of 1862, she ran into Warsaw Sound, Ga., and before a return cargo could be obtained, the enemy bottled her up with a flotilla of gunboats. She was then fitted out as a cruiser and re-christened the Rattlesnake. While watching a chance to run out of the Ogechee River, Feb. 27th, 1863, she grounded in Seven Mile Reach, above Fort McAllister, and the next day was attacked by the Federal monitor Montauk, which soon set her on fire with shells, and she burned until the flames reached her magazine and blew her into fragments.

YACHT AMERICA.-At the beginning of the war, the Confederate government bought for $60,000 the famous schooner yacht America, which had won the Queen's cup in the Cowes regatta of 1852. The intention was to fit her out as a cruiser, but she was blockaded in the St. John's River, Fla., by Federal ships, and was there scuttled by the Confederates. She was raised by the Federals and remained in the navy until after the war, when the U. S. government sold her to Gen. Benj. F. Butler, who still uses her as a yacht.

THE ALABAMA.-While Capt. Bulloch was concluding the negotiations for the construction of the Florida, in June, 1861, he opened communication with the Messrs. Laird, proprietors of extensive ship-yards at Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool, for the building of a small steam sloop-of-war, on a model which he described with some exactness. He paid them £47,500 for the vessel, which was known in the yards as "No. 290,” and subsequently became the Alabama. On July 29th, 1862, she steamed out of the Mersey, a few hours before the British Foreign Office sent down orders to detain her on the complaint of Minister Adams that she was a Confederate ship-of-war. Seven days later she arrived at Terceira, in the Azores Islands, where she was joined by the bark Agrippina, bringing her armament and stores, and the steamship Bahama, on which her officers and most of her crew had come out from England. On Aug. 24th she was formally commissioned as the Confederate States cruiser Alabama, with the subjoined list of officers: