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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 932 0 Browse Search
Alfred Roman, The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865 544 0 Browse Search
Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation 208 0 Browse Search
Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1. 116 0 Browse Search
Col. J. J. Dickison, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 11.2, Florida (ed. Clement Anselm Evans) 98 0 Browse Search
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 8. (ed. Frank Moore) 96 0 Browse Search
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume I. 94 0 Browse Search
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events, Diary from December 17, 1860 - April 30, 1864 (ed. Frank Moore) 86 0 Browse Search
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1. (ed. Frank Moore) 84 0 Browse Search
Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3. 78 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States. You can also browse the collection for Florida (Florida, United States) or search for Florida (Florida, United States) in all documents.

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and the whitest, and finest of sinnott hats, from which would be streaming yards enough of ribbon, to make the ship a pennant. I had had considerable difficulty in identifying the mouth of the Surinam River, so low and uniform in appearance was the coast, as seen from the distance at which we had been compelled to run along it, by the shallowness of the water. There is great similarity between these shelving banks, running off to a great distance, at sea, and the banks on the coast of West Florida. The rule of soundings, on some parts of the latter coast, is a foot to the mile, so that, when the navigator is in ten feet of water, he is ten miles from the land. This is not quite the case, on the coast of Guiana, but on some parts of it, a large ship can scarcely come within sight of the land. A small craft, drawing but a few feet of water, has no need of making a harbor, on either coast, for the whole coast is a harbor—the sea, in bad weather, breaking in from three to five fatho
iate press was thundering in the ears of the luckless Federal Captain. Honors were before him, terrors behind him! But there loomed up, high above the Sumter, the mountains of the French island of Martinique. Nations, like individuals, sometimes know whom to kick—though they have occasionally to take the kicking back, as we have just seen. It might do, doubtless thought Captain Palmer, to kick some small power, but France! there was the rub. If the Sumter were only in Bahia, where the Florida afterward was, how easily and securely the kicking might be done? A gallant captain, with a heavy ship, might run into her, cut her down to the water's edge, fire into her crew, struggling in the water, killing, and wounding, and drowning a great many of them, and bear off his prize in triumph! And then, Mr. Seward, if he should be called upon, not by Brazil alone, but by the sentiment of all mankind, to make restitution of the ship, could he not have her run into, by accident, in Hampton
Atlantic. The gun-boat Oreto, afterward the Florida, had sailed for Nassau, in the Bahamas, and t, as his first lieutenant on board the Oreto (Florida)—the officers detailed for that vessel not yeor's life. He made a brilliant cruise in the Florida, and became more famous as a skilful blockadete States flag was hoisted to the peak of the Florida. A number of the men by this time, were unreasons, the Captain-General desired that the Florida would come round to Havana, and remain until as, some violence might be committed upon the Florida by the Federal cruisers, in violation of Spanish neutrality. Accordingly, on the 30th the Florida got under way, and proceeded for Havana, wherthree of the enemy's cruisers lay between the Florida and the bar. Maffitt was assisted on deck, beo make a long story short, the gallant little Florida finally escaped her pursuers, and, in a shatt The rebel man-of-war, privateer or pirate Florida, otherwise known as the Oreto, has safely arr[8 more...]<
le, it matters not of what materials she may be composed, whence those materials may have been drawn, or where they may have been fashioned. It is the commission which a sovereign puts on board a ship, that causes her to personify the sovereign power, and it is obviously of no importance how the sovereign becomes possessed of the ship. It can make no difference to other nations, so far as her character of ship of war is concerned, whether she is fashioned out of the pines of Norway, or of Florida, or whether the copper on her bottom comes from Lake Superior or Peru; or, finally, whether Englishmen, or Frenchmen, or Americans shall have put her frame together, in either of their respective countries. Even if she be built, armed, and equipped in neutral territory, in plain violation of the neutral duty of that territory, she is purged of this offence, so far as her character of ship of war is concerned, the moment she reaches the high seas, and is commissioned. To apply this reaso
he vessels complained of in British ports, subsequently to their fraudulent escapes and armament, on the ground that when the vessels appeared in these ports, they did so in the character of properly commissioned cruisers of the Government of the so-styled Confederate States, and that they received no more shelter, provisions, or facilities, than was due to them in that character. This position is taken by his lordship in full view of the facts that—with the exception of the Sumter and the Florida—none of the vessels named were ever found in any place where a lawful belligerent commission could either be conferred or received. It would appear, therefore, that, in the opinion of her Majesty's Government, a British vessel, in order to acquire a belligerent character against the United States, had only to leave the British port where she was built, clandestinely, and to be fraudulently armed, equipped, and manned anywhere in Great Britain, or in any foreign country, or on the high seas
entire innocence of any breach of the laws of nations, or of the British Foreign Enlistment Act, Lord John Russell had been intimidated to such an extent, that the ship came within an ace of being detained. But for the little ruse which we practised, of going on a trial-trip, with a party of ladies, and the customs officers, mentioned by Mr. Laird, on board, and not returning, but sending our guests back in a tug, there is no doubt that the Alabama would have been tied up, as the Oreto or Florida had been, in court. She must have been finally released, it is true, but the delay itself would have been of serious detriment to us. After a few busy days in Liverpool, during which I was gathering my old officers of the Sumter around me, and making my financial arrangements for my cruise, with the house of Frazer, Trenholm & Co., I departed on the 13th of August, 1862, in the steamer Bahama, to join the Alabama. Captain James D. Bullock, of the Confederate States Navy, a Georgian, who
val School, at Annapolis, when the war broke out. Though still a mere boy, he resigned his appointment without hesitation, and came South. He had made the cruise with me in the Sumter, and been since promoted. Midshipman Joseph D. Wilson, of Florida, also an éleve of Annapolis, and who, like Armstrong, had made the cruise with me in the Sumter, and been promoted, took Stribling's place, and became third lieutenant. My fourth lieutenant in place of Evans was Mr. Arthur Sinclair, who, thout food-carrier for the extra-tropical whales of the northern hemisphere. An intelligent sea-captain, writing to Superintendent Maury of the National Observatory, some years before the war, informed him, that in the Gulf Stream, off the coast of Florida, he fell in with such a school of young sea-nettles, as had never before been heard of. The sea was literally covered with them for many square leagues. He likened them, in appearance, to acorns floating on the water, but they were so thick as
tral flags, were beginning to rot at the wharves of the once thrifty sea-ports of the Great Republic. Our nautical enterprise was beginning to tell on the enemy, and if we had had the ability to imitate Massachusetts, in the war of the first revolution, in the way of putting forth armed cruisers, to prey upon the enemy's commerce, the said enemy would not have had so much as a rope-yarn upon the sea, in the course of twelve months. But at the time of which I am writing, the Alabama and the Florida were the only two Confederate ocean cruisers afloat. On the 21st of October, we observed in latitude 39° 35′, and longitude 63° 26′, and on that day, we made our first capture since the gale. We were lying to, as usual, when a large ship was descried, in the north-west, running in our direction. Though the wind was very fresh, she had her royals and foretopmast studding-sails set, and was, in consequence, running before the wind, with great speed. I shook the reefs out of my own topsa<
ke nothing of Us. She may have been an enemy, but was probably a French ship of war, or transport, from Vera Cruz; the French expedition that culminated in the death of the unfortunate Maximilian having landed in Mexico about a year before, and there being much passing of steamships between France and Vera Cruz. On the 22d of December, night overtaking us, within about twenty miles of the Areas, we anchored in twenty fathoms of water, in the open sea. The Yucatan coast is like that of West Florida, and the Guianas, before described. It is a continuous harbor, a ship being able to hold on to her anchors in the heaviest gale. Getting under way the next morning, we continued on our course, and pretty soon made a bark standing in the same direction with ourselves. It was our old friend, the Agrippina, with her bluff bows, and stump top-gallant masts. She had been all this time making her way hither from Blanquilla—a period of nearly four weeks; the incorrigible old Scotch captain h
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 throats cut. We gleaned one gratifying piece of intelligence, however, from these papers. The Pirate Florida had put to sea from Mobile, to assist the British Pirate, in plundering, and burning the innocent merchant-ships of the United States, pursuing their peaceful commerce, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams, so often, and so naively expressed it to Earl Russell. Whilst the Parks was still burning, an English bark passed through the toll-gate, the captain of which was prevailed upon, to take the master of the burning ship, his wife, and two nephews, to London. We were glad, on the poor lady's accou
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