Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[487]

These facts will at once be brought before the British Consul. The preliminary steps have been taken. The facts will also be furnished the Portuguese Consul, who announces his intention of placing them before his Government; and besides whatever action the Italian Consul here may choose to take, the parties in Messina, to whom the property lost on the Lauretta was consigned, will of course do what they can to maintain their own rights. The case is likely to attract more attention than all the previous outrages of the Alabama, inasmuch as property rights of the subjects of other nations are involved, and the real character of Semmes and his crew becomes manifest.

Some interesting facts are given by Captain Wells in regard to the Alabama, to which, however, we can only make a brief allusion. The officers of the privateer are principally Southern men, but the crew are nearly all English and Irish. They claim that they were shipped by stratagem; that they were told the vessel was going to Nassau, and now they are promised shares in captured property— not only the property taken, but that which is burned, of which Semmes says he keeps an accurate account. The bills are to be paid by the “Confederate Government,” which Semmes, who enforces discipline only by terrorism, declares will soon achieve its independence. The men suppose they are gaining fortunes—though some of them protest against the cheat which has been practised upon them.

The above is a fair specimen of the average intelligence of Yankee newspapers, on any subject outside of the dirty pool of politics, in which they habitually dabble. I was not quite sure when I burned the Lafayette, that her cargo belonged to the shippers, British merchants resident in New York. The shippers swore that it did not belong to them, but to other parties resident in Ireland, on whose account they had shipped it. I thought they swore falsely, but, as I have said, I was not quite certain. The ‘Advertiser’ sets the matter at rest. It says that I was right. And it claims, with the most charming simplicity, that I was guilty of an act of piracy, in capturing and destroying the property of neutral merchants, domiciled in the enemy's country, and assisting him to conduct his trade! The reader now sees what estimate to put upon all the other balderdash of the article. I presume, the only thing Admiral Milne, and the British Minister at Washington did, was to wonder at the stupidity of the New York Commercial Advertiser. It is scarcely necessary to say, that Captain Wells of the Lauretta, took a ‘custom-house’ oath, when he swore to the account which the ‘Advertiser’ gives of his interview