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in the
spring and
summer of 1861.
1 Before the close of July, more than twenty of those depredators were afloat, and had captured millions of property belonging to American citizens.
The most formidable and notorious of the sea-going ships of this character, were the
Nashville,
Captain R. B. Pegram, a Virginian, who had abandoned his flag, and the
Sumter,
Captain Raphael Semmes.
The former was a side-wheel steamer, carried a crew of eighty men, and was armed with two long 12-pounder rifled cannon.
Her career was short, but quite successful.
She was finally destroyed by the
Montauk,
Captain Worden,
in the
Ogeechee River.
2 The career of the
Sumter, which had been a New Orleans and
Havana packet steamer, named
Marquis de Habana, was also short, but much more active and destructive.
She had a crew of sixty-five men and twenty-five marines, and was heavily armed.
She ran the blockade at the mouth of the
Mississippi River on the 30th of June,
and was pursued some distance by the
Brooklyn. She ran among the
West India islands and on the
Spanish Main, and soon made prizes of many vessels bearing the
American flag.
She was everywhere
|
Pirate Ship Sumter. |
received in British colonial ports with great favor, and was afforded every facility for her piratical operations.
She became the terror of the
American merchant service, and everywhere eluded National vessels of war sent out in pursuit of her. At length she crossed the ocean, and at the close of 1861 was compelled to seek shelter under British guns at
Gibraltar, where she was watched by the
Tuscarora. Early in the year 1862 she was sold, and thus ended her piratical career.
Encouraged by the practical friendship of the
British evinced for these corsairs, and the substantial aid they were receiving from British subjects in various ways, especially through blockade-runners, the conspirators determined to procure from those friends some powerful piratical craft, and made arrangements for the purchase and construction of vessels for that purpose.
Mr. Laird, a ship-builder at
Liverpool and member of the British Parliament, was the largest contractor in the business, and, in defiance of every obstacle, succeeded in getting pirate ships to sea.
The first of these ships that went to sea was the
Oreto, ostensibly built for a house in
Palermo, Sicily.
Mr. Adams, the
American minister in
London, was so well satisfied from information received that she was designed for the
Confederates, that he called the attention of the
British Government to the matter so early as the 18th of February, 1862.
But nothing effective was done, and she was completed and allowed to depart from British waters.
She went first to
Nassau, and on the 4th of September suddenly appeared