Chapter IV: A Story of Confederate Privateers

THEY DID PLENTY OF DAMAGE FOR A TIME, BUT THEIR CAREER WAS
BRIEF--CAPTURE OF THE FIRST OF THE CLASS, AND TRIAL OF HER CREW
ON A CHARGE OF PIRACY--REASONS WHY THEY COULD NOT BE HELD AS
CRIMINALS--LUCK OF THE _JEFFERSON DAVIS_--A NEGRO WHO RECAPTURED A
CONFEDERATE PRIZE TO ESCAPE THE TERRORS OF SLAVERY--A SKIPPER WHO
THOUGHT A GOVERNMENT FRIGATE WAS A MERCHANTMAN--THE “NEST” BEHIND
CAPE HATTERAS.

From a blockade of the ports of the Southern States it was a short and natural step for the navy to land and effectually close some port to Confederate commerce by occupying it. But before telling the story of the first expedition organized for this purpose the story of the Confederate privateers--real privateers, as distinguished from Confederate cruisers like the _Alabama_--will be told, for the reason that it was the work of these privateers that in good part led the government to decide on the first expedition for occupying a Southern port.

As a matter of fact, the idea of blockading the Southern ports was born of the determination of the Confederates to commission privateers. The sequence of events was as follows: The Confederates captured Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. On the 15th President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to protect the government property and enforce the laws of the nation in the seceding States. On the 17th Jefferson Davis “published a counter proclamation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal to be granted under the seal of the Confederate States against ships and property of the United States and their citizens.” The quotation is from Scharf’s “Confederate States Navy.” It was on receipt of this that Mr. Lincoln, on the 19th, ordered the blockade of the Southern ports.

However, Mr. Davis did not issue any commissions to privateers until after the Confederate Congress had passed, on May 6, 1861, an act authorizing him to do so. This act provided such safeguards as had ruled American privateers in the War of 1812. On May 14th another act supplemented the first by regulating the sale of prizes and the distribution of the proceeds.

Sufficient time has passed since that war to enable at least the younger generation of Northern-born men to view its events judicially, and it is therefore likely that no student of history will now be found to deny that the letters of marque subsequently issued under these acts of the Confederate Congress were entirely legal. The Confederates were entitled to the rights of belligerents--they at least became entitled to them the moment that President Lincoln issued his proclamation blockading the Southern ports. There is no point of international law more firmly established now than that a proclamation of a blockade carries with it a concession that war exists between the blockaders and the blockaded. And this is worth remembering, because Secretary of State Seward was unwilling to admit it for a very long time after a state of war did actually exist. At the same time it was entirely natural that Northern shipping men should have called these privateers pirates. Business operations tend to concentrate one’s nerves in his pocket and to render them so sensitive that any diminution of weight in the pocket causes excruciating agony. Naturally these would not hesitate to ignore the belligerent rights of an enemy, nor to use harsh and unjust language when they felt this pain.

Availing themselves of the invitation to do so, a number of citizens of Charleston equipped the pilot boat _Savannah_ with an eighteen-pounder, mounted on a pivot; procured a crew of thirty men, all told, under Capt. Thomas H. Baker; supplied them with small arms and ammunition, and sent them out under a commission which, because it was the first issued, shall be given in full, as follows:

“_Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, To
all who shall see these Presents, Greeting_:

“Know ye, That by virtue of the power vested in me by law, I have
commissioned, and do hereby commission, have authorized, and do
hereby authorize, the schooner or vessel called the _Savannah_
(more particularly described in the schedule hereunto annexed),
whereof T. Harrison Baker is commander, to act as a private armed
vessel in the service of the Confederate States, on the high seas,
against the United States of America, their ships, vessels, goods,
and effects, and those of their citizens, during the pendency of
the war now existing between the said Confederate States and the
said United States.

“This commission to continue in force until revoked by the
President of the Confederate States for the time being.

“Given under my hand and the seal of the Confederate States, at
Montgomery, this eighteenth day of May, A.D., 1861.

“(Signed) JEFFERSON DAVIS.

“By the President. R. Toombs, Secretary of State.

“SCHEDULE OF DESCRIPTION OF THE VESSEL.

“Name--Schooner _Savannah_. Tonnage--Fifty-three 41/95th tons.
Armament--One large pivot gun and small arms. No. of crew--thirty.”

THE CONFEDERATE STATES PRIVATEER SAVANNAH, LETTER OF MARQUE No. 1,
CAPTURED OFF CHARLESTON, BY THE U.S. BRIG PERRY, LIEUT. PARROTT.

_Entered according to act of Congress in the Year 1861 by E K
KIMMEL 59 NASSAU ST. N.Y. in the Clerks Office of the District
Court for the Southern District of New York._
]

The _Savannah_ sailed out of Charleston on the night of Sunday, June 2, 1861, and, eluding the Federal frigate _Minnesota_, went cruising for Northern merchantmen. The schooner was small, and the weather hot. The crew slept on deck that night, and, as was testified in court later on, they were not feeling very well next morning. In fact, “being on a flare-up the night before, not much was said,” even when a sail was seen, and it became certain that the sail “was a Yankee vessel.” Eventually the sail was overhauled. It proved to be the brig _Joseph_, of Rockland, Maine, Capt. Thies N. Meyer, bound, sugar laden, from Cardenas, Cuba, to Philadelphia. The brig had a crew of six, all told. She was easily taken, and with a prize crew of six men was sent to Georgetown, South Carolina, where she was condemned and sold in the usual form.

Nevertheless, the cruise was not a paying venture, for soon after sending the prize away the _Savannah_ chased the government man-o’-war brig _Perry_, thinking her another merchantman, and was, in consequence, captured. The _Perry_ turned her over to the _Minnesota_; the _Minnesota_ towed her into Charleston harbor near enough to let her owners learn of their loss, and then sent her North. At New York the _Savannah’s_ crew was thrown into prison as pirates, and on July 16, 1861, they were indicted for piracy. The printed report of the trial that followed makes an interesting book of 385 pages. The accused as a whole claimed the rights of prisoners of war, but in spite of the plain evidence that they were entitled to such rights, the jury disagreed. Perhaps when one considers the state of the public mind in the North at that time, the wonder is that they were not convicted and hanged.

Having been remanded in irons to prison, the Confederate authorities took up their case. The victory the Confederates had obtained at Manassas enabled them to put a number of Federal prisoners into irons to abide the fate of the _Savannah’s_ crew. The Federal officers so confined included five colonels, two lieutenant-colonels, three majors, and three captains. Mr. Davis sent an envoy with a protest to Washington. Nothing was done about the matter just then.

Meantime, on October 25, 1861, a member of the crew of the privateer _Jefferson Davis_ was convicted on a charge of piracy, and on the 29th three others of the crew were convicted. Nevertheless, on February 3, 1862, all of the alleged pirates, with thirty-four men from the privateer _Petrel_, were sent to Fort Lafayette as prisoners of war, and the date is of some importance because the change of policy, even though it were compelled by a threat of retaliation, was another official acknowledgment that the government had a very great war upon its hands instead of a local insurrection of no concern to the rest of the world.

Much more interesting than that of the _Savannah_ are the stories of some of the other privateers. The _Jefferson Davis_, for instance, had a career that approached that of some of the American privateers in 1812. She was built by Northern capitalists in 1854 for a slaver, and was captured on the coast of Africa with many slaves on board, and sent to Charleston. A fine Baltimore clipper she was, and when the war came she was seized and armed with three eighteen-pounders and two twelves. She got out to sea on June 28th, having seventy men before the mast. On July 6th, off Hatteras, she got the brig _John Welsh_, loaded with sugar. On the same day the schooner _Enchantress_ was captured, and the next day, being but 150 miles from Sandy Hook, she took the schooner _S. J. Waring_, that was bound to Montevideo with a valuable cargo. The first-named prizes were sent to Southern ports; but William Tillman, a colored man, recaptured the _Waring_, and one fact connected with the adventure makes the story worth telling.

The _Davis_ placed a prize crew of five men on the _Waring_, Mr. Montague Amiel, a Charleston pilot, being the prize master. William Tillman, who was the _Waring’s_ cook; Brice Mackinnon, a passenger, and two of the _Waring’s_ seamen were left on board of her, and she was headed toward the South. The Northern men at once made friends with their captors. The negro continued to cook perforce, but he made no objection to the work, and the two Northern seamen volunteered to make the best of a bad streak of luck by helping to work the ship.

But because Tillman knew that he would become a slave as soon as he was carried into a Southern port, he determined that he would never go there, and on the night of July 16, 1861, when fifty miles south of Charleston, he found opportunity to become master of the schooner.

It was at about midnight. Prize Master Amiel was asleep in the cabin, with the prize mate in a nearby berth. The second mate was on deck, but about half-asleep, while one of the _Waring’s_ original crew was at the wheel, and two of the prize seamen were on duty near the bow. Taking the hatchet which he used in splitting wood for the galley stove, the negro killed the prize captain and the two mates, when the Confederate seamen surrendered and agreed to help work the ship back to New York. There was no one on board who understood navigation, but the negro knew enough to lay a course that would bring “the broadside of America in sight,” and after that he followed the coast until he reached New York.

Meantime the _Davis_ had captured the _Mary Goodell_, from New York to Buenos Ayres; but she was allowed to go after the prisoners were put on board, and five of her crew had shipped in the _Davis_. On the same day (July 9th) the _Mary E. Thompson_, of Searsport, was captured and sent in, after which the _Davis_ went to the West Indies.

In all, nearly a dozen merchantmen were captured by the energetic captain, Louis M. Coxetter, of the _Davis_. He then returned, and while trying to enter St. Augustine, Florida, grounded, and the vessel was lost. Not all of his prizes ever reached home, and it was from the recaptured vessels that the men convicted of piracy were taken. It is said that the prizes sent in, however, netted over $200,000 in gold for the crew. Coxetter himself, like most of his class, became a blockade-runner after the blockade, and England’s refusal to permit the sale of Confederate prizes in her ports made privateering unprofitable--that is, say, after January 1, 1862.

Between July 19 and August 27, 1861, the privateer _Dixie_ sent in three prizes. The _Freely_, another Charleston privateer, was also a successful boat. So was the _York_. The revenue cutter _Aiken_, which was converted into the privateer _Petrel_, at Charleston, was about the most unlucky of the fleet. She went chasing the frigate _St. Lawrence_ soon after getting safely to sea, thinking the big man-o’-war was a merchantman. Certainly no men worse fitted for their task than the _Petrel’s_ crew were ever sent to sea, for even when within short range they failed to recognize the warship. They fired three guns--the first two across the bows of the _St. Lawrence_ to heave her to, and the last one at her. Then the _St. Lawrence_ opened her ports and fired three guns at the privateer. An eight-inch shell and a thirty-two-pound solid shot struck her below the water-line, the shell bursting while right in the planks. The hole made was so large that the _Petrel_ rolled to the swell and sank instantly, leaving her crew afloat in the water. Four men were drowned, and the rest were picked up by the _St. Lawrence_.

There were a number of other privateers from Charleston, but they neither accomplished nor suffered anything worth especial mention. In addition, there was a fleet of small schooners that had their headquarters in the Pamlico Sound. It is worth the reader’s time to take a look at the map of the enclosed waters along the coast south of the Chesapeake Bay; it is worth any traveller’s time to visit the region. A series of long, narrow islands, built of the _débris_ of New England rocks, lie along there, enclosing the waters of Currituck, Albemarle, and Pamlico sounds. They are but narrow, and, for the most part, but barren stretches of sand. Here and there a shoal inlet cuts across this sand-bar--an inlet that is shifted to and fro, and deepened and shoaled by the wind-driven water of the sea, but always kept open somewhere by the outflow of the waters from the slope of land east of the Alleghany ridge. There are a few inlets that are never closed wholly, no matter how the set of the tide piles the sand into them, and of these the most important are known as Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets.

_From an engraving by Hinshelwood of the painting by Manzoni._]

The Hatteras Inlet, which lies thirteen miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, is the most important. Here the water over the bar is, at high tide, usually fourteen feet deep; within is a safe anchorage for any ship that can pass in. But a mile inside the bar lies another, where the water is ordinarily but seven feet deep. Once across that, plenty of deep water is found, both north and south, and away inland to the ports whence came, in those days, the bounties of nature called naval stores. Hatteras is of small importance in these days, since railroads have been stretched along the coast, but the time was when not a small fleet of coasters used it regularly.

It was from among these vessels and their crews that the “Hatteras pirates” came in the first four or five months of the Civil War. They were, of course, lawfully commissioned private cruisers, but the records of their deeds have been lost, save, as it is known, that one bark, seven brigs, and eight schooners had been carried in there as prizes previous to August 28, 1861, and condemned and sold. The _Transit_, of New London; the _Wm. S. Robins_, and the _J. W. Hewes_ were lying at Newbern alone, on the first of July, awaiting adjudication.

Then, too, it speedily became a haunt of blockade-runners seeking cotton as well as naval stores, and to dispose of manufactured goods from England.

To the Northern merchant Pamlico Sound was a “pirates’ nest” that needed immediate attention, and the next chapter shall tell what was done.