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

[420] been half my time running into port for fuel. This would have disclosed my whereabouts so frequently to the enemy, that I should have been constantly in danger of capture, whereas I could now stretch into the most distant seas, and chase, capture, and destroy, perfectly independent of steam. I adopted the plan, therefore, of working under sail, in the very beginning of my cruise, and practised it unto the end. With the exception of half a dozen prizes, all my captures were made with my screw hoisted, and my ship under sail; and with but one exception, as the reader will see hereafter, I never had occasion to use steam to escape from an enemy.

This keeping of the sea, for three, and four months at a time, had another great advantage—it enabled me to keep my crew under better drill, and discipline, and, in every way, better in hand. Nothing demoralizes a crew so much as frequent visits to port. The sailor is as improvident, and incapable of self-government as a child. Indeed he is regarded by most nations as a ward of the state, and that sort of legislation is thrown around him, which is thrown around a ward in chancery. The moment a ship drops her anchor in a port, like the imprisoned bird, he begins to beat the bars of his cage, if he is not permitted to go on shore, and have his frolic; and when on shore, to carry our simile still further, he is like the bird let out of the cage. He gives a loose rein to his passions, and sometimes plunges so deeply into debauchery, that he renders himself unfit for duty, for days, and sometimes weeks, after he is hunted up and brought on board by the police, which is most frequently the manner in which his captain again gets possession of him. Such is the reckless intemperance into which some of the regular old salts plunge, that I have known them to go on shore, make their way straight to a sailor-boarding-house, which is frequently a dance-house, and always a grog-shop, give what money they have about them to the ‘landlord,’ and tell him to keep them drunk as long as it will last, and when they have had the worth of it in a good, long, big drunk, to pick them up, and send them off to their ship! The very d—l is to pay, too, when a lot of drunken sailors is brought on board, as every first lieutenant knows. Frequently they have to be knocked down, disarmed