Were it only for the glimpse it gives of the state of the mercantile marine thirty years ago, my first voyage would be worth relating. Those who do not know how things were before the Plimsoll Act had made a revolution in Merchant Shipping would hardly believe what a man even in my position was expected to undergo without complaint.

The steamer that had been purchased as a blockade-runner, like most others at this time, was quite unfit for the purpose. To explain that she was a second-hand Irish cattle boat will convey to those who have voyaged in St. George's Channel a fair idea of what she was. Those who have not must understand that the average quality and condition of such craft are very low, and the Despatch was not above the average. Her boilers were nearly worn out; her engines had been sadly neglected; and added to this, she drew far too much water for the hazardous entrances of the blockaded ports. But so indifferent were the ships at this time composing the blockading squadrons, so insufficient their numbers, and so inefficient their crews, that during the first year small sailing vessels of light draught and ordinary trading steamers were employed for the purpose of running the blockade.

As has been shown, anything was thought good enough for a blockade-runner then, and no time was lost in getting a cargo on board the Despatch. In choosing this there was not much difficulty. In January a vessel flying the Confederate colours had put into Liverpool; she had run the blockade out and was thus able to bring us, not only the latest news of the Federal fleet, but also full information of the kind of cargo that would be most welcome in the Southern ports.

The chief requirements were war materials of every sort, cloth for uniforms, buttons, thread, boots, stockings, and all clothing, medicines, salt, boiler-iron, steel, copper, zinc, and chemicals. As it did not pay merchants to ship heavy goods, the charge for freight per ton at Nassau being £80 to £100 in gold, a great portion of the cargo generally consisted of light goods, such as silks, laces, linens, quinine, etc., on which immense profits were made. At this time there were no mills, and practically no manufactories in the Confederate States, so their means of production were nil. With the progress of the war their need of war material increased so sorely that in 1864 the Confederate Government limited the freight-room on private account, and prohibited the importation of luxuries on the ground that if allowed to come in and be purchased the resources of the country would thereby be absorbed.

As soon as her lading was complete a start was made. And what a start it was! It almost takes one's breath away in these be-legislated days to think what the Despatch must have looked like as she dropped down the Mersey. Her owners had taken advantage of their timely information to load her down, as low as she would float, with a cargo consisting of ponderous cases and barrels of war material as well as light goods; her deck was piled as high as the rail with coal, which had to be taken for the voyage to Nassau, so as to avoid calling at any intermediate port; and she steamed out to brave the Atlantic with barely one foot of freeboard to her credit.

Fortunately at the outset the weather kept fair, or my career must have had a very premature end; but thanks to an unusually fine February we wallowed along pretty comfortably, till we had made some 400 miles to the south-west of Ireland. Here, however, through the carelessness of the engineers, the water was allowed to get so low in the boilers that the crowns to the furnaces of one of them were "brought down." This means that only by a miracle was an explosion escaped, and that the Despatch was entirely incapacitated from proceeding on her voyage. There was nothing to do but to put back for repairs, under one boiler, and we laid her head for Queenstown, thanking our stars it was no worse.

It was three weeks before we could get to sea again, and then it was only to find ourselves once more on the brink of destruction. Before we had passed the Azores we came in for a terrific gale, which our overladen vessel was in no condition to meet; she speedily sprang a leak, so serious that in a very short time four of the eight furnaces were extinguished and the firemen were toiling at the rest up to their knees in water. For hours we looked for her to founder at any moment, as the gray breakers came rolling upon us, but somehow we managed to keep her afloat, and in due course were ploughing through the sunny waters of New Providence, and came to rest in the pretty harbour of Nassau.

In those days I was a confirmed somnambulist, and one stormy night considerably astonished the officer of the watch by suddenly appearing on the bridge at midnight in bare feet and sleeping attire. Gripping him by the arm I yelled, "For God's sake respect the spars," and turning on my heel returned to my cabin along the slippery deck, with the steamer pitching and rolling in half a gale of wind. Of course the man thought I was mad, but was too astonished to seize me; perhaps it was fortunate he did not do so, as to have been suddenly awakened in such a situation might have been anything but pleasant. I have for many years given up this dangerous habit. My last escapade occurred a long time ago, when one afternoon on board a P. & O. steamer, while taking a siesta, I suddenly jumped through the upper half door of my deck cabin and appeared in very light attire, to the astonished gaze of some fifty passengers who were on the quarter-deck. Fortunately a friend who was travelling with me managed to clasp me round the waist before I could jump overboard, and conducted me to my cabin none the worse, except for a skinned nose and barked shins. My fellow-passengers, however, were evidently suspicious regarding my condition of mind, and looked very much askance when I appeared at dinner, thinking no doubt that I was a lunatic and my friend my keeper.

If that voyage had been almost enough to extinguish all the ardour I had for the life before me, Nassau was enough to set it well aflame again. The very thought of the place and of the exciting life there in those days, through the brief fever of its prosperity, sets my fancy tingling even now.

Those few short years of extravagant importance—so sudden, so fitful, so completely passed away—are like a dream, and it seems almost impossible to revive a picture of what Nassau was when it found itself the base of operations against the great blockade. For centuries the little town had slumbered in complete obscurity. Depopulated and abandoned in the old days by the Spaniards, it had been occupied in Stuart times by Englishmen, and became a haunt of buccaneers. Then followed a century or so when it was a counter for diplomatists, and buccaneers settled down into wreckers, scraping together hard-earned living from the hurricanes' leavings, and filling up the dull months between the stormy seasons with a little fruit raising and sponge fishing. Thus ingloriously had it faded into the obscurest of colonial capitals, with a population of some 3000 or 4000 souls. There lived and ruled the Governor of the Bahamas, and there lived the Chief Justice and the Bishop; these with their modest following, and the officers of a West India regiment and a few of the leading merchants and their families, made up almost all there was of society! Little more eventful ever broke the monotony of their feuds and friendships than the visit of one of the ships forming the West Indian squadron. Their Lilliputian politics went on from year to year, undisturbed and uncared for; there was nothing to mark their place in the world but a dusty pigeon-hole somewhere in the Colonial Office, which was filled, and emptied, and filled again. Every one was poor and every one lazily hopeless of any further development; a few schooners that came and went at infrequent intervals sufficed for all the trade there was, and the whole air of the sleepy settlement had been one of indolent acquiescence in its own obscurity.

Then past all expectations came the war, and gold poured into its astonished lap. When first I saw the low line of houses nestling in the tropical vegetation of their gardens a change had already taken place. The blockade had been on foot a bare year, but even then the quiet little port had asserted its new importance and was overflowing with the turmoil of life. Many influential firms connected with the Southern States, and also English ones, had established agencies there, and almost every day steamers managed by those agents left the harbour to try their luck at evading the blockade or arrived with cargoes of cotton from the beleagured ports. Of course, seeing that Nassau was only some 560 miles from Charleston and 640 from Wilmington, and that, moreover, the chain of the Bahama islets extended some hundred miles in the direction of those ports, thus providing the extra protection of neutral territory for that distance, Nassau was par excellence the base for approaching the blockaded Atlantic ports of the South. Bermuda was its rival, but only in a lesser degree, as it was further off, and its conveniences as regards communication and accommodation were less. It is some 690 miles distant from Wilmington, the course being somewhat to the northward of west, and in the autumn especially it was seldom possible to get over without encountering a gale of wind. The one thing necessary for the blockading vessels being speed, their hulls were of the lightest description; this, coupled with the fact that they were always loaded down deep with coal, made a gale of wind an even worse enemy to encounter than a Federal cruiser.

Havana was the best base for the Gulf ports, but as New Orleans was captured early on in the war, Galveston and Mobile were the only two blockaded ports that could be approached from it; and seeing the difficulty there was in procuring cotton at those places and of disposing of inward cargoes, the trade done with them was a flea-bite compared with that from Charleston and Wilmington. At one time the trade of these two ports assumed very large proportions; the number of vessels employed in it was astonishing, and no sooner was one sunk, stranded, burnt, or captured than two more seemed to take her place.

Of Southern firms Messrs. Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. did the largest business, as they were not only engaged largely on their own account in blockade-running enterprises, but they were also agents for the Southern States Government. Their representative in Nassau, Mr. J. B. Lafitte, a charming man in every respect, occupied a most prominent position,—in fact more prominent than that of the Governor himself, and certainly he was remunerated better.

After Fraser, Trenholm, and Co. came the English firm of Alex. Collie and Co., at that time one of great repute, represented by my friend L. G. Watson, and they from time to time were possessed of a large fleet of runners commanded mostly by naval officers. After them came the house I represented, which from first to last owned some fifteen steamers; and after them a number of small firms, owning perhaps one, possibly two, boats apiece, so that in the aggregate the number of boats and the capital employed was enormous.

So nicely has Nature dispersed the Bahamas that they afforded neutral water to within fifty miles of the American coast, and no sooner was the blockade declared than the advantages of Nassau as a basis of operations were recognised and embraced. The harbour was alive with shipping, the quays were piled with cotton, the streets were thronged with busy life. So far grown and established indeed did I find the business of blockade-running, that I was seized with a sense of being late in the field and with a desire to rush in and reclaim lost time. Fortunately there was little to delay us, so, full of impatience and excitement, we set about preparing for a run. Our supplies were ready, and in the harbour lay a barque which had been sent out to act as my coal store-ship, and afterwards she was to carry home any cotton we should succeed in getting out. Nothing seemed wanting for a start, but I was doomed to disappointment. No sooner did I begin to pick up the lore of the place than the unpleasant truth came out.

Even in the early days there were men whose tales of successful trips gave them a reputation as "blockade experts," and every one of them condemned the Despatch as wholly unfit for the work. The blockade was already gaining system and coherence; the Northerners, no longer content with simply blockading the Confederate ports, had established a chain of powerful cruisers which patrolled the seas from the American coast to the very entrance of Nassau harbour. The old Despatch was much too slow to stand a ghost of a chance of escaping them, moreover she drew so much water that the Charleston bar was the only one she could hope to get over, and it was now so strictly watched that a craft so unhandy was certain to be captured in the attempt.

After all I had gone through it was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was impossible for a man entirely without experience, as I was then, to ignore the exasperating unanimity of the experts; therefore after consultation with the local agent of my firm I resolved to sell my cargoes on the spot and get both vessels home to the best advantage.

Still I was not without consolation. Although within a year of the beginning of the blockade the North, in pursuit of a steady policy, had secured various bases on the blockaded coast for the use of their squadrons, which were rapidly being augmented by improved types of vessels, and had thereby reduced considerably the number of points to be watched, and though the business of blockade-running was now becoming risky, no time was lost in endeavouring to meet the new demands on our energy and skill. If the Federals were learning the business, so were we. It was clear that the blockade-runners must not only be increased in numbers but must be improved in type. The day of sailing vessels and ordinary trading steamers was over; accordingly steamers of great speed were ordered to be built expressly for the service.

I knew that at home one of the first vessels specially built for blockade-running had been laid down and was rapidly being completed, also that she was to be placed under my charge as soon as ready. Accordingly, towards the end of the year, after making my preliminary arrangements, I went home full of hope, although sadly impatient at the year's delay caused by all the mistakes and disasters.

Before getting there, however, I had an anxious time to pass through; it was necessary to provide some employment for the Despatch and her consort the barque Astoria, and as no direct freight could be obtained for either I had to cast about for intermediate work for them. The sailing vessel I despatched to New York, and in an evil moment I made a contract, on the "no cure no pay" principle, for the Despatch to tow a disabled steamer to the same port, arranging to go myself in the mail steamer so as to meet both ships there.

After I had completed my Nassau business I did so, and on my arrival at New York I was disgusted to find both vessels in quarantine with yellow fever on board; also that the Despatch had dropped her tow off Port-Royal in a gale of wind and come on without her.

This was a pretty mess for a youngster to be in, in a strange port like New York, where everything connected with Nassau was looked upon with suspicion, and the fear of yellow fever was rampant. It was my first intimate acquaintance with the disease, but, fortunately, the cooler climate in time worked its own cure, and, after encountering innumerable quarantine difficulties, both vessels were given pratique, but not before several deaths had occurred.

In the interim the Despatch was seized for $30,000 at the suit of the owners of the steamer which she had attempted to tow, as damages for letting her go; and she was only released from quarantine to find herself in the clutches of the Marshal of the port. As I had no means for providing the required security, the captain and I formed rather a mad scheme to rescue her from his clutches. The captain was to get her under weigh quietly, taking the Marshal's officer with him, while I remained behind to lull suspicion. Early one misty morning he accomplished this successfully and began to steam slowly down the Bay, but the revenue cutter lying close alongside gave the alarm, and the forts opened fire at once. For a time he held on, and was nearly out of range when the pilot, fearing, I presume, for his share in the transaction, declined to go further, and there was nothing for it but ignominiously to return. Of course all this made my position worse, but, to make a long story short, a kind friend, a prominent New York banker, went bail for me, and the Despatch was released and loaded for home. Finally I compromised the case for about $2000. The barque I sent on to St. John, and, following her myself by steamer, I chartered her to carry home a cargo of timber.