We had in the early part of the war a depÔt at Bermuda as well as at Nassau, and Frank Hurst was at that time my brother agent there. I went there twice, once in the first Banshee, and once from Halifax, after a trip to Canada in order to recruit from a bad attack of yellow fever; but I never liked Bermuda, and later on we transferred Hurst and his agency to Nassau, which was more convenient in many ways and nearer Wilmington. Moreover I had to face the contingency, which afterwards occurred, of the Atlantic ports being closed and our being driven to the Gulf. The Mudians, however, were a kind, hospitable lot, and made a great deal of us, and there was a much larger naval and military society stationed there than in Nassau. They had suffered from a severe outbreak of yellow fever, and the 3rd Buffs, who were in garrison at the time, had been almost decimated by it.

It was on my second trip to the island that one of the finest boats we ever possessed, called the Night Hawk, came out, and I concluded to run in with her. She was a new side-wheel steamer of some 600 tons gross, rigged as a fore and aft schooner, with two funnels, 220 feet long, 21-1/2 feet beam, and 11 feet in depth; a capital boat for the work, fast, strong, of light draught, and a splendid sea-boat—a great merit in a blockade-runner that sometimes has to be forced in all weathers. The Night Hawk's career was a very eventful one, and she passed an unusually lively night off Fort Fisher on her first attempt.

Soon after getting under weigh our troubles began. We ran ashore outside Hamilton, one of the harbours of Bermuda, and hung on a coral reef for a couple of hours. There loomed before us the dismal prospect of delay for repairs, or, still worse, the chance of springing a leak and experiencing such difficulties and dangers as we had undergone on the Will-o'-the-Wisp, but fortunately we came off without damage and were able to proceed on our voyage.

Another anxiety now engrossed my mind: the captain was an entirely new hand, and nearly all the crew were green at the work; moreover, the Wilmington pilot was quite unknown to me, and I could see from the outset that he was very nervous and badly wanting in confidence. What would I not have given for our trusty Tom Burroughs. However, we had to make the best of it, as, owing to the demand, the supply of competent pilots was not nearly sufficient, and towards the close of the blockade the so-called pilots were no more than boatmen or men who had been trading in and out of Wilmington or Charleston in coasters. Notwithstanding my fears, all went well on the way across, and the Night Hawk proved to be everything that could be desired in speed and seaworthiness.

We had sighted unusually few craft, and nothing eventful occurred until the third night. Soon after midnight we found ourselves uncomfortably near a large vessel. It was evident that we had been seen, as we heard them beating to quarters and were hailed. We promptly sheered off and went full speed ahead, greeted by a broadside which went across our stern.

When we arrived within striking distance of Wilmington bar the pilot was anxious to go in by Smith's inlet, but as he acknowledged that he knew very little about it I concluded it was better to keep to the new inlet passage, where, at all events, we should have the advantage of our good friend Lamb to protect us; and I felt that as I myself knew the place so well, this was the safest course to pursue. We were comparatively well through the fleet, although heavily fired at, and arrived near to the bar, passing close by two Northern launches which were lying almost upon it. Unfortunately it was dead low water, and although I pressed the pilot to give our boat a turn round, keeping under weigh, and to wait a while until the tide made, he was so demoralised by the firing we had gone through and the nearness of the launches, which were constantly throwing up rockets, that he insisted upon putting her at the bar, and, as I feared, we grounded on it forward, and with the strong flood-tide quickly broached-to, broadside on to the Northern breaker. We kept our engines going for some time—but to no purpose, as we found we were only being forced by the tide more on to the breakers. Therefore we stopped, and all at once found our friends, the two launches, close aboard: they had discovered we were ashore, and had made up their minds to attack us.

At once all was in confusion; the pilot and signalman rushed to the dinghy, lowered it, and made good their escape; the captain lost his head and disappeared; and the crews of the launches, after firing several volleys, one of which slightly wounded me, rowed in to board us on each sponson. Just at this moment I suddenly recollected that our private despatches, which ought to have been thrown overboard, were still in the starboard life-boat. I rushed to it, but found the lanyard to which the sinking weight was attached was foul of one of the thwarts; I tugged and tugged, but to no purpose, so I sung out for a knife which was handed to me by a fireman, and I cut the line and pitched the bag overboard as the Northerners jumped on board. Eighteen months afterwards that fireman accosted me in the Liverpool streets, saying, "Mr. Taylor, do you remember my lending you a knife." "Of course I do," I replied, giving him a tip at which he was mightily pleased: poor fellow, he had been thirteen months in a Northern prison.

When the Northerners jumped on board they were terribly excited. I don't know whether they expected resistance or not, but they acted more like maniacs than sane men, firing their revolvers and cutting right and left with their cutlasses. I stood in front of the men on the poop and said that we surrendered, but all the reply I received from the lieutenant commanding was, "Oh, you surrender, do you?..." accompanied by a string of the choicest Yankee oaths and sundry reflections upon my parentage; whereupon he fired his revolver twice point blank at me not two yards distant: it was a miracle he did not kill me, as I heard the bullets whiz past my head. This roused my wrath, and I expostulated in the strongest terms upon his firing on unarmed men; he then cooled down, giving me into the charge of two of his men, one of whom speedily possessed himself of my binoculars. Fortunately, as I had no guard to my watch, they didn't discover it, and I have it still.

Finding they could not get the ship off, and afraid, I presume, of Lamb and his men coming to our rescue, the Federals commenced putting the captain (who had been discovered behind a boat!) and the crew into the boats; they then set the ship on fire fore and aft, and she soon began to blaze merrily. At this moment one of our firemen, an Irishman, sung out, "Begorra, we shall all be in the air in a minute, the ship is full of gunpowder!" No sooner did the Northern sailors hear this than a panic seized them, and they rushed to their boats, threatening to leave their officers behind if they did not come along. The men who were holding me dropped me like a hot potato, and to my great delight jumped into their boat, and away they rowed as fast as they could, taking all our crew, with the exception of the second officer, one of the engineers, four seamen and myself, as prisoners.

We chuckled at our lucky escape, but we were not out of the wood yet, as we had only a boat half stove in, in which to reach the shore through some 300 yards of surf, and we were afraid at any moment that our enemies finding there was no powder on board might return. We made a feeble effort to put the fire out, but it had gained too much headway, and although I offered the men with me £50 apiece to stand by me and persevere, they were too demoralised and began to lower the shattered boat, swearing that they would leave me behind if I didn't come with them. There was nothing for it but to go, yet the passage through the boiling surf seemed more dangerous to my mind than remaining on the burning ship. The blockaders immediately opened fire when they knew their own men had left the Night Hawk, and that she was burning; and Lamb's great shells hurtling over our heads, and those from the blockading fleet bursting all around us, formed a weird picture. In spite of the hail of shot and shell and the dangers of the boiling surf, we reached the shore in safety, wet through, and glad I was in my state of exhaustion from loss of blood and fatigue to be welcomed by Lamb's orderly officer.

The poor Night Hawk was now a sheet of flame, and I thought it was all up with her; and indeed it would have been had it not been for Lamb, who, calling for volunteers from his garrison, sent off two or three boat loads of men to her, and when I came down to the beach, after having my wound dressed and a short rest, I was delighted to find the fire had sensibly decreased. I went on board, and after some hours of hard work the fire was extinguished. But what a wreck she was!

Luckily with the rising tide she had bumped over the bank, and was now lying on the main beach much more accessible and sheltered. Still it seemed an almost hopeless task to save her; but we were not going to be beaten without a try, so, having ascertained how she lay and the condition she was in, I resolved to have an attempt to get her dry, and telegraphed to Wilmington for assistance.

Our agent sent me down about 300 negroes to assist in baling and pumping, and I set them to work at once. As good luck would have it, my finest steamer, Banshee No. 2, which had just been sent out, ran in the next night. She was a great improvement on the first Banshee, having a sea-speed of 15-1/2 knots, which was considered very fast in those days; her length was 252 feet, beam 31 feet, depth 11 feet, her registered tonnage 439 tons, and her crew consisted of fifty-three in all. I at once requisitioned her for aid in the shape of engineers and men, so that now I had everything in the way of hands I could want. Our great difficulty was that the Night Hawk's anchors would not hold for us to get a fair haul at her.

But here again I was to be in luck. For the very next night the Falcon, commanded by poor Hewett, in attempting to run in stuck fast upon the bank over which we had bumped, not one hundred yards to windward of us, and broke in two. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and Hewett's mischance proved the saving of our ship. Now we had a hold for our chain cables by making them fast to the wreck, and were able gradually to haul her off by them a little during each tide, until on the seventh day we had her afloat in a gut between the bank and the shore, and at high water we steamed under our own steam gaily up the river to Wilmington.

Considering the appliances we had and the circumstances under which we were working, the saving of that steamer was certainly a wonderful performance, as we were under fire almost the whole time. The Northerners, irritated, no doubt, by their failure to destroy the ship, used to shell us by day and send in boats by night; Lamb, however, put a stop to the latter annoyance by lending us a couple of companies to defend us, and one night, when our enemies rowed close up with the intention of boarding us, they were glad to sheer off with the loss of a lieutenant and several men. In spite of all the shot and shell by day and the repeated attacks at night, we triumphed in the end, and, after having the Night Hawk repaired at a huge cost and getting together a crew, I gave May, a friend of mine, command of her, and he ran her out successfully with a valuable cargo, which made her pay, notwithstanding all her bad luck and the amount spent upon her. Poor May, he was afterwards governor of Perth gaol, and is dead now,—a high-toned, sensitive gentleman, mightily proud of his ship, lame duck as she was.

When she was burning, our utmost efforts were of course directed towards keeping her engine-room and boilers amidships intact, and confining the flames to both ends; in this we were successful, mainly owing to the fact of her having thwart-ship bunkers: but as regards the rest of the steamer she was a complete wreck; her sides were all corrugated with the heat, and her stern so twisted that her starboard quarter was some two feet higher than her port one, and not a particle of woodwork was left unconsumed. Owing to the limited resources of Wilmington as regards repairs, I found it impossible to have this put right, so her sides were left as they were, and the new deck put on on the slope I have described, and caulked with cotton, as no oakum was procurable. When completed she certainly was a queer-looking craft, but as tight as a bottle and as seaworthy as ever, although I doubt if any Lloyd's surveyor would have passed her. But as a matter of fact she came across the Atlantic, deeply immersed with her coal supply, through some very bad weather, without damage, and was sold for a mere song, to be repaired and made into a passenger boat for service on the East Coast, where she ran for many years with success.

It had been a hard week for me, as I had no clothes except what I had on when we were boarded,—my servant very cleverly, as he imagined, having thrown my portmanteau into the man-of-war's boat when he thought I was going to be captured, and all I had in the world was the old serge suit in which I stood. Being without a change and wet through every day and night for six days consecutively, it is little wonder that I caught fever and ague, of which I nearly died in Richmond, and which distressing complaint stuck to me for more than eighteen months. I shall never forget, on going to a store in Wilmington for a new rig-out (which by the bye cost $1200), the look of horror on the storekeeper's face when I told him the coat I had purchased would do if he cut a foot off it: he thought it such a waste of expensive material.

A very unfortunate occurrence took place incident upon the wreck of the Falcon. She had on board as passenger a Mrs. Greenhow, a famous Confederate spy, who, when the steamer struck, pleaded hard to be put ashore, fearing no doubt capture by the Federals. Hewett was most energetic in his efforts to dissuade her, but at last manned a boat for her, which was upset in the breakers, and she alone was drowned. It was I who found her body on the beach at daylight, and afterwards took it up to Wilmington. A remarkably handsome woman she was, with features which showed much character. Although one cannot altogether admire the profession of a spy, still there was no doubt that she imagined herself in following such a profession to be serving her country in the only way open to her.

Surely in war the feelings of both men and women become blunted as to the niceties of what is right or wrong. I well remember on one occasion an eminent Confederate officer bringing me an infernal machine which he had invented, a kind of shell exactly like a lump of coal, with a request that some should be placed on each of our steamers, and that, in case of capture, they should be put in the coal bunkers so as to be thrown into the furnaces by the prize crew. I told him that this was not my idea of making war, and moreover mildly suggested that, even if it were, he seemed to have forgotten that our crew would probably be on board as prisoners and be blown up into the air with their captors.

Another eminent Confederate military doctor proposed to me during the prevalence of the yellow fever epidemic that he should ship by our boats to Nassau and Bermuda sundry cases of infected clothing, which were to be sent to the North with the idea of spreading the disease there. This was too much, and I shouted at him, not in the choicest language, to leave the office. It is difficult to conceive of such a diabolical idea, not only to spread havoc among combatants, but among innocent women and children, being present in an educated man's mind.