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Passing of the monitor Scorpion.
Was built in
England for the
Confederate States Navy.
After completion, with her sister monitor, the Wivern, was seized by English government.
The following interesting account of the passing of the old monitor
Scorpion, a relic of the Confederate navy, is taken from the
Royal Gazette, of
Hamilton, Bermuda, August 4, 1903:
The foundering of the old monitor Scorpion off George's Shoal recently while being towed from Bermuda to St. John, N. B., where she was to be broken up as old metal, marks, perhaps, the passing of the last relic of the navy of the Confederate States of America.
The Scorpion and her sister monitor, the Wivern, were constructed by Laird Bros., of Liverpool, under the supervision of Captain James D. Bullock, of the Confederate navy, an uncle of President Roosevelt.
Owing to the protest of Mr. Adams, then minister to England, acting under orders from Secretary Seward, the British government seized the two vessels and refused to allow them to be turned over to the Confederacy.
It has always been asserted by Southern and naval officers that the failure of the Confederate government to secure these two monitors, which were then the most formidable war vessel afloat, went far to change the result of the war between the States.
There are today living in Washington two or three exConfed-erate naval officers who were among those sent to England to bring the Scorpion and the Wivern to this country, and one of them furnished the following account of the Scorpion:
Soon after the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac in Hampton Roads in 1862 the Confederate government ordered from Laird Bros.
two monitors and sent Captain Bullock to England to superintend their construction.
The contract price was £ 93,750 or about $468,750 apiece.
One was to be completed in March, 1863, and the other in May of the same year.
They were known while undergoing construction as El Tousson and El Mounassir.
There was some delay in the work, and it was not until May 27, 1863, that the Confederate officers who were to man the new boats ran the blockade at Charleston, S. C., and started for England.
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Those in the party were Matthew F. Maury, John R. Hamilton, Captain Littlepage, Dan Trigg, H. H. Marmaduke and Captain James North. Captain Bullock was to command one of monitors and Captain North the other.
The party were beached at Eleuthera Island for two days. Then a wrecking vessel came to their relief and towed their ship to Nassau.
They arrived in England in August.
The agents of the United States government in England found out the intentions of the Confederates in regard to the Laird monitors and reported the matter to Secretary Seward.
The latter filed a protest through Minister Adams, and England held up the two vessels.
The Confederate officers then invoked the aid of Bravay Bros., French bankers, who announced that they would purchase the monitors from Laird Bros., and that they were the agents of the Khedive of Egypt in the transaction.
Their real plan was to turn them over to the Confederates.
The British government sent a secret messenger to the Khedive, who denied all knowledge of the matter.
Upon this Secretary Seward notified the British and the French governments that if the Lairds were allowed to deliver the two boats to Bullock and North, the United States would consider it an act of war on the part of Great Britain, and, if Bravay Brothers bought them and delivered them, an act of war on the part of France.
In December, 1864, England confiscated the two boats and reimbursed their cost to the Confederate government.
The English papers said at the time that superiority of the Scorpion and the Wivern to the other vessels of the British navy was a disgrace to England.
The two monitors had the defective armor of the Monitor and Merrimac and were fitted with revolving turrets.
If they could have been secured by the Confederacy the blockades might have been raised and the effect upon the result of the war might have been very great.
In view of the fact that the Scorpion had been used of late years as a target for British war vessels in the West Indies, an old Confederate sailor wrote to the Association of Confederate Veterans suggesting that she be bought by the association and preserved as a relic.
His letter reached New Orleans in the last week of May, two days after the convention had closed its annual session and too late, therefore, to receive attention.
It was published in the New Orleans papers and a movement was started to carry out the plan.
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[From the
Richmond, Va.,
News-Leader, August 14, 1898.]
