his bewilderment, and make up his mind that we were really beaten, my ship went down. I acquit him, therefore, entirely, of any intention of permitting my men to drown, or even of gross negligence, which would be almost as criminal. It was his judgment which was entirely at fault. I had known, and sailed with him, in the old service, and knew him then to be a humane and Christian gentleman. What the war may have made of him, it is impossible to say. It has turned a great deal of the milk of human kindness to gall and wormwood.

CHAPTER LIV.

OTHER INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE ALABAMA AND THE KEARSARGE THE RESCUE OF OFFICERS AND SEAMEN BY THE ENGLISH STEAM-YACHT DEERHOUND THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DE

MANDS THAT THEY BE GIVEN UP

MENT REFUSES COMPLIANCE

BRITISH GOVERN

THE RESCUED PERSONS

NOT PRISONERS · THE INCONSISTENCY OF THE FEDERAL SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

NOT

OTWITHSTANDING my enemy went out chivalrously armored, to encounter a ship whose wooden sides were entirely without protection, I should have beaten him in the first thirty minutes of the engagement, but for the defect of my ammunition, which had been two years on board, and become much deteriorated by cruising in a variety of climates. I had directed my men to fire low, telling them that it was better to fire too low than too high, as the ricochet in the former case-the water being smooth-would remedy the defect of their aim, whereas it was of no importance to cripple the masts and spars of a steamer. By Captain Winslow's own account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armored, of course, my shot and shell, except in so far as fragments of the latter may have damaged his spars and rigging, fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded, as the reader has seen, until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the mean time, in spite of the armor of the Kearsarge, I had mortally wounded that ship in the first thirty minutes of the engagement. I say, "mortally wounded her," because the wound would have proved mortal, but for the defect of my ammunition above spoken of. I lodged a rifled percussion shell near

her stern post-where there were no chains-which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. If the cap had performed its duty, and exploded the shell, I should have been called upon to save Captain Winslow's crew from drowning, instead of his being called upon to save mine. On so slight an incident the defect of a percussion-cap-did the battle hinge. The enemy were very proud of this shell. It was the only trophy they ever got of the Alabama! We fought her until she would no longer swim, and then we gave her to the waves. This shell, thus imbedded in the hull of the ship, was carefully cut out, along with some of the timber, and sent to the Navy Department in Washington, to be exhibited to admiring Yankees. It should call up the blush of shame to the cheek of every Northern man who looks upon it. It should remind him of his ship going into action with concealed armor; it should remind him that his ship fired into a beaten antagonist five times, after her colors had been struck and when she was sinking; and it should remind him of the drowning of helpless men, struggling in the water for their lives!

Perhaps this latter spectacle was something for a Yankee to gloat upon. The Alabama had been a scourge and a terror to them for two years. She had destroyed their property! Yankee property! Curse upon the "pirates," let them drown! At least this was the sentiment uttered by that humane and Christian gentleman, to whom I have before had occasion to allude in these pages-Mr. William H. Seward-one of the chief Vandals, who found themselves in the possession and control of the once glorious "Government of the States," during the war. This gentleman, in one of his despatches to Mr. Adams, prompting him as to what he should say to the English Government, on the subject of the rescue of my men by the Deerhound, remarks: "I have to observe, upon these remarks of Earl Russell, that it was the right of the Kearsarge that the pirates should drown, unless saved by humane exertions of the officers and crew of that vessel, or by their own efforts, without the aid of the Deerhound. The men were either already actually prisoners, or they were desperately pursued by the Kearsarge. If they had perished [by being permitted to be drowned, in cold blood after the action], the Kearsarge would have had the

advantage of a lawful destruction of so many enemies; if they had been recovered by the Kearsarge, with or without the aid of the Deerhound, then the voluntary surrender of those persons would have been perfected, and they would have been prisoners. In neither case would they have remained hostile Confederates." No one who is not a seaman can realize the blow which falls upon the heart of a commander, upon the sinking of his ship. It is not merely the loss of a battle-it is the overwhelming of his household, as it were, in a great catastrophe. The Alabama had not only been my battle-field, but my home, in which I had lived two long years, and in which I had experienced many vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, sickness and health. My officers and crew formed a great military family, every face of which was familiar to me; and when I looked upon my gory deck, toward the close of the action, and saw so many manly forms stretched upon it, with the glazed eye of death, or agonizing with terrible wounds, I felt as a father feels who has lost his children - his children who had followed him to the uttermost ends of the earth, in sunshine and storm, and been always true to him.

A remarkable spectacle presented itself on the deck of the sinking ship, after the firing had ceased, and the boats containing the wounded had been shoved off. Under the order, which had been given, "Every man save himself who can!" all occupations had been suspended, and all discipline relaxed. One man was then as good as another. The Kearsarge stood sullenly at a distance, making no motion, that we could see, to send us a boat. The Deerhound and the French pilot-boats were also at a considerable distance. Meantime, the water was rushing and roaring into the ship's side, through her ghastly death-wound, and she was visibly settling - lower and lower. There was no panic, no confusion, among the men. Each stood, waiting his doom, with the most perfect calmness. The respect and affection manifested for their officers was touching in the extreme. Several gathered around me, and seemed anxious for my safety. One tendered me this little office of kindness, and another, that. Kell was near me, and my faithful steward, Bartelli, also, was at my side. Poor Bartelli! he could not swim a stroke-which I did not know at the time,

or I should have saved him in the boats—and yet he was calm and cheerful; seeming to think that no harm could befall him, so long as he was at my side. He asked me if there were not some papers I wanted, in the cabin. I told him there were, and sent him to bring them. He had to wade to my stateroom to get them. He brought me the two small packages I had indicated; and, with tears in his eyes, told me how the cabin had been shattered by the enemy's shot-our fine painting of the Alabama, in particular, being destroyed. Poor fellow! he was drowned in ten minutes afterward.

Two of the members of my boat's crew being around me, when the papers were brought, insisted that I should give them to them to take care of. They were good swimmers, they said, and would be sure to preserve them for me. I gave each a package-put up tightly between small slats — and they thrust them in the bosoms of their shirts. One of them then helped me off with my coat, which was too well laden with buttons, to think of retaining, and I sat down whilst the other pulled off my boots. Kell stripped himself in like manner. The men with the papers were both saved. One swam to a French pilot-boat, and the other to the Deerhound. I got both packages of papers. The seaman who landed on the French coast sought out Captain Sinclair, who was still at Cherbourg, and delivered them to him. A writer in the London "Times" thus describes how I got the other package: "When the men came on board the Deerhound, they had nothing on but their drawers and shirts, having been stripped to fight; and one of them, with a sailor's devotedness, insisted on seeing his Captain, who was then lying in Mr. Lancaster's cabin, in a very exhausted state, as he had been intrusted by Captain Semmes with the ship's papers, and to no one else would he give them up. The men were all very anxious about their Captain, and were rejoiced to find that he had been saved. They appeared to be a set of first-rate fellows, and to act well together, in perfect union, under the most trying circumstances."

The ship settled by the stern, and as the taffarel was about to be submerged, Kell and myself threw ourselves into the sea, and swam out far enough from the sinking ship to avoid