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‘ [258] detained under legal warrant upon any criminal charge, we are not aware of any ground upon which they can properly be prevented from going on shore and disposing of themselves as they think fit, and we cannot advise her Majesty's government to assume or exercise the power of keeping them under any kind of restraint.’ The law officers who gave this advice and these opinions, and whose names were attached thereto, were Sir Roundell Palmer, Sir R. P. Collier and Sir Robert Phillimore. In consequence of these opinions of the law officers of the Crown, instructions were sent to Captain Paynter, of her majesty's ship Donegal, to release all officers and men who were not ascertained to be British subjects. Captain Paynter reported on November 8 that, on receiving these instructions he went on the Shenandoah, and being satisfied that there were no British subjects among the crew, or at least none of whom it could be proved were British subjects, he permitted all hands to land with their private effects. Thus ended our memorable cruise—grand in its conception. Grand in its execution, and unprecedentally, awfully grand in its sad finale. To the four winds the gallant crew scattered, most of them never to meet again until called to the Bar of that Highest of all Tribunals. The ship was handed over to the United States agents, a Captain Freeman was appointed to take her to New York, but going out and encountering high west winds, lost light spars and returned to Liverpool. It was not tried again. The noble vessel was put up and sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar. She finally was lost on a coral reef in the Indian Ocean in 1879— fourteen years after the last Confederate flag was hauled down. [The flag of the Shenandoah, reverently preserved by the late Colonel Richard Launcelot Maury, C. S. A., son of Commissioner Matthew Fontaine Maury, was recently deposited with the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, and is preserved in the Museum Building at Richmond, Va.—Ed.]
Richmond, VA. 1907.
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