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

[585] Davidson, a lumber dealer in New York had chartered the ship, and shipped the lumber, in the usual course of his business, to the parties in Montevideo; that he had paid most of the freight, in advance, and insured himself against the war risk, both upon the cargo and the freight. The manner in which this case was ‘put up,’ in the papers, was an improvement upon some others I had examined. The New York merchants were evidently becoming expert in the preparation of bogus certificates. It was no longer merely stated that the property belonged to ‘neutral owners,’ but the owners themselves were named. In short, the certificate found on board the Parks was in due form, but unfortunately for the parties who contrived the clever little plot, the master forgot to throw overboard his letter-bag, and among the letters found in that bag, was one written by Davidson, giving instructions to the consignees, in which the following expressions occur: ‘The cargo of the John A. Parks, I shall have certified to, by the British Consul, as the property of British subjects. You will find it a very good cargo, and should command the highest prices.’ By the time that I had finished the examination of the case, Bartelli announced breakfast, and I invited my Hallowell friend to take a cup of coffee with me, telling him, at the same time, that I should burn his ship. As well as I recollect, he declined the coffee, but I am quite certain that the ship was burned. The carpenter of the Alabama was thrown into ecstasies by this capture. All the other departments of the ship had been kept well supplied, except his own. The paymaster, who was also commissary, the boatswain, the sailmnaker, had all been ‘plundering’ the enemy quite extensively, but no ‘boards’ had come along, until now, for the poor carpenter. Here they were at last, however, and if I had not put some restraint upon my zealous officer of the adze and chisel, I believe he would have converted the Alabama into a lumberman.

We received from the Parks, sure enough, the mail we had been waiting for. There must have been a barrel-full, and more of newspapers and periodicals, going to the Montevideans and Buenos Ayreans— many of them in the best of Spanish, and all explaining the ‘great moral ideas,’ on which the Southern people were being robbed of their property, and having their