Oct. 7, 1864. |
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she would sometimes skim swiftly along the coast of the United States, leaving a track of desolation in her course, and then shoot off to some distant waters.1 on one of these occasions, while in command of Captain Morris, she went down the Brazilian coast, destroyed the barque Mondamon, off the Port of Bahia, and then ran into that harbor.
There Morris saw with alarm the United States steamer Wachusett, Captain Collins.
As a precaution, he anchored the Florida in the midst of the Brazilian fleet, and under the guns of the most powerful fort guarding the town.
The American Consul, T. F. Wilson, protested against the hospitality thus given to the pirate by the Brazilian authorities, to which no attention was paid.
Captain Collins determined that the Florida should never put to sea again.
He tried to draw her into battle outside of the harbor, but did not succeed; and then, in disregard of the rights of the Brazilians in their own waters, he ran down
upon the Florida with a full head of steam, with the intention of crushing and sinking her. He failed.
She was damaged, but not crippled.
There was a little musket firing on both sides, without injury, when Collins demanded the surrender of the Florida. her commander and half his crew were ashore, and the Lieutenant in charge, having no choice, complied.
The pirate ship was instantly boarded, and lashed to the Wachusett, when the latter put to sea under a full head of steam, towing her prize, unmindful of a challenge by the Brazilian fleet, and unharmed by shots from the Bahian fort.
Captor and prize soon appeared in Hampton Roads; and not long afterward the Florida was sunk while lying off Newport-Newce.
the capture of the Florida produced much excitement.
It was brought to the notice of the Government of the United States by the Brazilian minister at Washington in the form of a protest, with the assumption that the rebels were lawful belligerents, and that the Florida was one of their vessels of war. The Government disavowed the act of its agents in the Port of Bahia as a violation of neutrality laws and the rights of Brazil, and Consul Wilson, known to have been implicated in the capture, was recalled, and Captain Collins was suspended and ordered before a court-martial.
At the same time, the assumption of the Brazilian Government was disallowed, and
1 Maffit, the commander of the Florida, was represented by all who knew him as a man lacking all real sense of honor. His conduct in the capture of the Jacob Bell, a merchant ship on her way to New York from China, sufficiently proves the assertion. Among the passengers was Mrs. H. Dwight Williams, wife of the American Commissioner of Customs at Swartow, in China. She had in her trunk many valuable presents for friends at home, besides a large amount of clothing and silver plate. She gave Maffit a list of her personal effects, and begged him to spare them for her. He politely told her he could not, and then went to the Jacob Bell. she obtained permission to return to that ship, where she found Maffit and his fellow-officers engaged in appropriating her property to their own use. They broke open packages; and laces, letters, photographs of friends, which they could not use, they trampled under foot on the deck, in her presence. Mrs. Williams was soon taken back to the Florida, when the Jacob Bell was burned. One of Maffit's school-fellows, a recent writer asserts, remembers the following lines, written by another about twelve years of age, on an “exhibition day” of the school:--
and here's Johnny Maffit, as straight as a gun--
if you face him square up, he'll turn round and run!
the first boy in school, sir, if thieving and lies,
instead of good scholarship, bore off the prize.
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