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| John A. Winslow. |
1864. |
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the hospitality it had afforded to the Florida at Bahia, was denounced as an “act of intervention in derogation of the law of nations, and unfriendly and wrongful, as it was manifestly injurious to the United States.”
1
long before the Florida was seized, the career of the Georgia was ended,2 and the Alabama3 had made her last cruise.
It had been a long and prosperous one in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans, during which she had captured sixty-seven vessels, of which forty-five were destroyed.
She returned to European waters early in the summer of 1864, and took refuge in the French harbor of Cherbourg.
At that time the United States steamer Kearsarge,4 commanded by Captain John A. Winslow, was lying in the Dutch port of Flushing.
The American consul at Cherbourg immediately informed Winslow, by telegraph, of the presence of the Alabama, when he left Flushing and proceeded, with the Kearsarge, to look after the pirate ship.
the Kearsarge appeared off Cherbourg on the 14th of June,
and on the following day, Semmes, having made arrangements for all needful assistance, sent a note to Winslow, desiring him not to leave, as he (the pirate) intended to fight him. Winslow was glad to oblige the writer, and remained.
Semmes then made ample preparations.
He deposited valuable property on the shore with his friends,5 and at his own chosen time, which was Sunday, the 19th of June, he went out of the harbor with the Alabama, followed by the yacht Deerhound, belonging to one of the English gentry named Lambert.
It was a sort of tender, to see that the pirate
1 exceptions have been taken to the use of the title of pirate applied to the vessels and men like the Florida, Alabama, and others, and their officers and crews. The Secretary of State (W. H. Seward), with all the light that international arrangements and the laws of nations, as well as the letter and spirit of definition on these points, could give, not only considered these vessels and their crews in that light, but said so in his diplomatic correspondence. In his letter to the Brazilian minister, on the occasion we are considering, he said, that the Government maintained that the Florida “like the Alabama, was a pirate, belonging to no nation or lawful belligerent, and, therefore, the harboring and supplying of these piratical ships and their crews, in belligerent ports, were wrongs and injuries for which Brazil justly owes reparation to the United States, as ample as the reparation she now receives from them.” Consult, also, page 570, of volume II., and note 1, page 556, volume I. Of this work.
2 the Georgia was an iron ship, built in Glasgow. She went to sea with the name of Japan, in April, 1868. off the coast of France she received her armament, changed her name to Georgia, and began the career of a pirate. After committing many depredations, and destroying large and valuable merchant ships, she put into French ports, and then went to England where a pretended sale of her was made to a Liverpool merchant, who dispatched her to Lisbon, under the pretense that she had been chartered by the Portuguese Government. When twenty miles from Lisbon, she was captured by the United States steam-frigate Niagara, Captain Craven, who took her to England, and landed her crew at Dover. No one seemed willing to question the correctness of the transaction, and that was the last of the Georgia as a pirate ship.
3 see picture of the Alabama, on page 571.
4 this name was given to the vessel by the wife of G. V. Fox, then the efficient Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who was the daughter of the late Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire. It was the Indian name of a mountain in her native State.
5 this consisted chiefly of a chest of coin, and 62 chronometers, which he had taken from the vessels he had captured. The Confederate agent at Cherbourg, M. Bonfils, took charge of this property, which was valued at about $25,000.
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