James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[204] and Guadaloupe, fell in with the Wachusett off St. Thomas. Wilkes thereupon left the Wachusett, and transferring his. flag to the Vanderbilt, proceeded to Havana. He was much pleased with his new acquisition. On the 20th of March he wrote the Department: ‘I cannot well describe to you the efficiency of this steamer, and the excellent condition of discipline she is in, and the many advantages she offers for this particular cruising. Her speed is much beyond that of any other steamer I know of, and her armament is equal to anything she can possibly have to encounter.’¹ Nothing would induce Wilkes to part with her, until the 13th of June, when, in obedience to peremptory orders from the Department, he allowed her to go on her cruise. She proceeded directly to the coast of Brazil. But it was now too late: the bird had flown. The Alabama had been at Fernando de Noronha on the 10th of April, and at Bahia on the 11th of May; and by the 1st of July she had left the South American coast altogether.

Touching at the Brazilian ports, Baldwin found himself everywhere upon the track of the enemy, but a month behind her. He followed her to the Cape of Good Hope, stopping on the way at St. Helena. At the Cape Semmes eluded him successfully; and the cruise of the Vanderbilt, from which so much had been expected, produced no substantial result.

At the very time that the Alabama left the Cape and disappeared in the Indian Ocean, the United States sloopof-war Wyoming was cruising in the neighborhood of the Straits of Sunda, to protect the commerce passing over the great highway to the China Sea. Two days before the Alabama arrived in the Straits the Wyoming was lying at Batavia,