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

It was now nine o'clock at night. It had been blowing a gale of wind, all day, from the south-east; but it was a fairweather gale, if I may use the solecism; the sky being clear, and the barometer high. These are notable peculiarities of the south-east gales at the Cape of Good Hope. The sky is always clear, and the gale begins and ends with a high barometer. I was very anxious to get to sea. A report had come in, only a day or two before, that the Vanderbilt was still cruising off Cape Agulhas, and I was apprehensive that she might get news of me, and blockade me. This might detain me several days, or until I could get a dark night—and the moon was now near her full—in which to run the blockade. I need not remark that the Vanderbilt had greatly the speed of me, and threw twice my weight of metal. The wind having partially lulled, we got up steam, and at about half-past 11, we moved out from our anchors. The lull had only been temporary, for we had scarcely cleared the little islands that give a partial protection to the harbor from these south-east winds, when the gale came whistling and howling as before. The wind and sea were both nearly ahead, and the Alabama was now put upon her metal, under steam, as she had been so often before, under sail. False Bay is an immense sheet of water, of a horse-shoe shape, and we had to steam some twenty miles before we could weather the Cape of Good Hope, under our lee. We drove her against this heavy gale at the rate of five knots per hour.

This struggle of the little ship with the elements was a thing to be remembered. The moon, as before remarked, was near her full, shedding a flood of light upon the scene. The Bay was whitened with foam, as the waters were lashed into fury by the storm. Around the curve of the ‘horse-shoe’ arose broken, bald, rocky mountains, on the crests of which were piled fleecy, white clouds, blinking in the moonlight, like banks of snow. These clouds were perfectly motionless. It appeared as if the D—1 had spread a great many ‘table-cloths’ around False Bay, that night; or, rather, a more appropriate figure would be, that he had touched the mountains with the stillness of death, and wreathed them with winding-sheets. The scene was wild and weird beyond description. It was a picture for the eye of a poet or painter to dwell upon. Nor was the imagination