After my disappointment it will easily be imagined how anxious I was to know how my new ship was progressing. On reaching Liverpool my first care was to visit the yard where she was being built. To my great delight I found her almost completed, and a marvel of shipbuilding as it seemed to us then. For the Banshee, as she was called, may claim to be a landmark not only in the development of blockade but also of marine architecture. With the exception of a boat built for Livingstone of African fame, she was, I believe, the first steel ship ever laid down. The new blockade-runner was a paddle boat, built of steel, on extraordinarily fine lines, 214 feet long and 20 feet beam, and drew only 8 feet of water. Her masts were mere poles without yards, and with the least possible rigging. In order to attain greater speed in a sea-way she was built with a turtle-back deck forward. She was of 217 tons net register, and had an anticipated sea speed of eleven knots, with a coal consumption of thirty tons a day. Her crew, which included three engineers and twelve firemen, consisted of thirty-six hands all told.

Steel ship-building was then in its infancy, and the Banshee was the first of a fleet that was soon to become famous. There were several similar steamers already in hand, and although no one could tell how they would behave when exposed to the great seas of the Atlantic, the best results were anticipated from the strength and lightness of their materials. They were expected to develop a buoyancy beyond everything that had yet been seen, and American naval officers awaited their arrival on the scene of activity with an interest as great as ours.

The Banshee was ready for sea early in 1863, and I had the satisfaction of finding myself steaming down the Mersey in the first steel vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic.

Like most first attempts, however, she was far from a success, and by the time we reached Queenstown she had betrayed serious defects. To begin with, the speed she developed was extremely disappointing. With the idea of protecting her boilers from shot, they had been constructed so low that they had not sufficient steam space, and, worse than this, the plates of which she was built, being only an 1/8 and 3/16 of an inch thick, she proved so weak that her decks leaked like a sieve. It was found absolutely necessary to put into Queenstown and make such alterations as were possible. Thus three more weeks were lost, and when at last we were able to put out again it was only to be driven back off the Fastnet by a south-westerly gale, which swept the Banshee clean from stem to stern of everything on deck, filled her fore stoke-hole, and compelled us to return for fresh repairs. Considering how frail the vessel was, the wonder is, not that the Banshee was driven back, but that she ever got across the Atlantic at all. Still her next start was successful, and reaching Madeira without adventure, excepting a close shave from being run down in the Bay of Biscay by a French barque, she began her real career as a blockade-runner.

For even here danger began. At this time a great deal of bad blood was caused by the way in which the Northerners in their efforts to enforce a blockade were extending the doctrine of the operations permissible to belligerents. But there is no doubt now that they were perfectly right. True, the proposition that a belligerent might seize a neutral ship for attempted breach of blockade thousands of miles away from the blockaded coast was one that would have been condemned by the old school of International lawyers as nothing less than monstrous, and by none more energetically than the great publicists who have so richly adorned the American bench.

So far were such doctrines from being recognised, that it was generally held that a vessel making a long ocean voyage might even call at a blockaded port to inquire if the blockade was still existent, and, no matter how suspicious her intentions, she was entitled to a warning before being captured. But it must be remembered that those were the days of sailing ships, which might have been without any news of passing events for months. No blockade of any importance had yet been subjected to the new conditions of steam navigation, and it was unreasonable to expect that the blockaders would hold themselves bound by rules which never contemplated the existing state of things. If the Americans were stretching the theory of blockade, it was only because we were extending its practice. It was not to be argued that, if we were building a whole fleet of steamers for the express purpose of defying their cruisers, they were not justified in trying to intercept them at any point they chose. From the very outset the voyages of these vessels showed them to be guilty, and the most barefaced advocate could hardly have maintained without shame that they were protected by their ostensibly neutral destination, when that destination was a notorious nest of offence like Nassau.

Still the new methods were none the less galling to the susceptibilities of British merchants, who of all men claimed to go and come on the high seas as they pleased, and every day those engaged in the service became more pronounced in their Southern sympathies, and louder in their denunciations of the Northerner's high-handed ways.

In order to economise coal the Banshee was taking the usual course adopted by sailing vessels. This was the ordinary practice of runners, and as the Federals grew bolder, stronger, and more exasperated, they stretched their patrolling cruisers further and further across the Atlantic, till, a few weeks after the Banshee left Madeira, a Federal ship of war was actually lying in wait for one of the new runners at the mouth of Funchal Bay! The moment the British vessel put to sea the American opened fire upon her as mercilessly as though she were coming out of Charleston or Wilmington instead of out of a neutral port, and nothing but superior speed and clever handling saved her from destruction within sight and sound of neutral territory.

The Banshee having been earlier in the field was more fortunate, but the voyage was none the less exciting as she neared the Bahamas. The neighbouring seas were alive with cruisers who, regarding everything bound for Nassau as prim facie guilty of an intention to break the blockade, seized any vessel they had a mind to on the chance of getting her condemned in the United States Courts. Indeed, the principal centres of blockade-running were almost as closely invested as the ports of the Confederate States, and only a few months before the notorious Captain Wilkes (now promoted to the rank of Admiral for his popular but unwarrantable conduct in the Trent affair) had been further distinguishing himself by literally blockading Bermuda with the squadron under his command.

Although from first to last the British Government showed nothing but sympathy with the Northern States in the difficult task of their blockade, and although they never once complained of a decision of the American Courts, or in any way countenanced the runners, this was going a little too far. A protest was unavoidable, and considering the antecedents of Admiral Wilkes the Federal Government could hardly complain if two British war-ships were ordered to watch the over-zealous officer. It would appear that at the White House the representations from St. James's were regarded as reasonable, for after this the American cruisers kept a more deferential distance; the Banshee at any rate was able to run into Nassau without being overhauled, and her arrival there caused a great sensation, as being the first boat specially built for the service.

Having received the congratulations of my many friends at Nassau upon possessing so fine a tool to work with, I at once set about getting her ready for a trip as soon as the nights set in dark enough. For so vigilant had the blockading force become by this time, that a successful run was considered practically impossible except on moonless nights. Invisibility, care, and determination were the secrets of success, and to this end the Banshee was carefully prepared. Everything aloft was taken down, till nothing was left standing but the two lower masts with small cross-trees for a look-out man on the fore, and the boats were lowered to the level of the rails. The whole ship was then painted a sort of dull white, the precise shade of which was so nicely ascertained by experience before the end of the war that a properly dressed runner on a dark night was absolutely indiscernible at a cable's length. So particular were captains on this point that some of them even insisted on their crews wearing white at night, holding that one black figure on the bridge or on deck was enough to betray an otherwise invisible vessel.

Perfect as the Banshee looked, when her toilet was complete, I was even more fortunate in my crew.

For captain I had Steele, one of the most daring and successful commanders the time brought out. Absolutely devoid of fear, never flurried, decided and ready in emergency, and careful as a mother, he was the beau-ideal of a blockade-runner. Already he had served his apprenticeship to the trade and knew what failure meant, for while in command of the Tubal Cain he had been captured on his very first trip, and, after tasting for a short time the hospitality of an American prison, had been released—richer by the experience, but in no wise daunted.

The chief engineer, Erskine, too, had seen service, having worked as second engineer on board the Confederate cruiser Oreto, when the famous Captain Maffitt ran her into Savannah. As the engines of a blockade-runner are her arm, her success must necessarily in great measure depend on the qualities of her engineer, and it would have been hard to find a better man for the task than Erskine. Cool in danger, full of resource in sudden difficulty, and as steady as the tide, he was yet capable of fearlessly risking everything and straining to the last pound, when the word came, in one of those rousing forms of expression with which old Steele was wont to notify down the engine-room tube, that the critical moment had come.

For pilot a Wilmington man had been sent out by our agents there, and was waiting for me at Nassau. He too turned out a jewel. He knew his port like his own face, and the most trying situations or heaviest firing could never put him off or disturb his serene self-possession. For all his duties he had an instinct that approached genius. On the blackest night he could always make out a blockader several minutes before any one else; and so acute at last did this sense become, that it used to be a byword that Tom Burroughs at last got to smell a cruiser long before he could see her.

Through the ignorance or cowardice of the pilot vessels were frequently lost, and to obtain a good pilot was as troublesome as it was essential. The risk they ran was great, for if captured they were never exchanged; but their pay, which frequently amounted to £700 or £800 a round trip, was proportionate to the risk.

Thus well equipped and laden with arms, gunpowder, boots, and all kinds of contraband of war, as soon as the moon was right, the Banshee stole out of Nassau for the first time to make the best of her way to Wilmington.