With the view to be reliably informed of the events at Bordeaux, I frequently sent Captain E. Tessier there, who acted as my agent in that and several other transactions requiring tact, prudence, and a familiar knowledge of Continental languages and customs. My appearance in Bordeaux for a single day would have excited suspicion, and Captain Tessier was warned to guard against exhibiting any greater curiosity about the vessels than a professional man visiting a maritime city and its dockyards would be likely to show.

Captain Tessier was familiar with the designs of the rams and the peculiar service for which they were intended, namely, on a shoal coast and in the Mississippi river. He soon informed me that the engineer who was superintending the ram bought by Denmark was making alterations which materially changed the original plan, and that the method of securing the armour-plates, and some other portions of the work, was being done in a manner he felt sure I would not approve. It is probable that the chief object of the Danish agent was to get the vessel completed for immediate service, and that time was more important in his estimation than extreme care and nicety in construction. Captain Tessier could only communicate secretly or confidentially with M. Arman, and it was impossible to interfere in any way with the acts and purposes of the actual owner.

There appears to have been much delay in the completion of the Danish ram. Whether the difficulty of getting her out of France during the continuance of the war with Prussia was the cause or not, I have never been informed, but when she was at last finished, hostilities had ceased, and questions arose between. M. Arman and the Danish Government about the acceptance of the ship. M. Arman informed me that the

Danish Ministry of Marine wished to annul the purchase, because, as he stated, the vessel was not ready in time to take part in the war, and was not wanted for the peace establishment. The ship was, however, taken to Copenhagen in November, and while she was there M. Arman sent an agent whom he often employed in his transactions with foreign Governments, and who represented him in the business with Denmark, to communicate the state of affairs to me, and to arrange for a re-delivery of the ram to the Confederate States. The representative of M. Arman in the negotiations for the sale of the ships was of course familiar with all the arrangements by which those already delivered had been despatched from France, either during actual hostilities between Prussia and Denmark, or during a short armistice. M. Arman had offered in October to manage the transactions with the Danish Government in such a way as to effect a redelivery of the ship to me; but the vessel was then incomplete. I had every reason to suppose that the sale to Denmark was believed to be bonâ fide, both by the French Foreign Office and the United States Minister, and I thought it would be imprudent to enter into an engagement which could by any possibility arouse suspicion, and again draw attention to a Confederate agent. When, however, M. Arman sent his representative the second time with a proposition for the delivery of the ship, the circumstances had wholly changed. The vessel was clear of French interference. She was in Copenhagen, or at least she was en route for that port, and the purchasers were desirous to annul their bargain. Arman proposed to instruct his agent to manage the negotiations at Copenhagen so as to give me time to collect a staff of officers, prepare the necessary supply of stores and a tender, and to select a suitable rendezvous.

M.

He said that when I was ready his agent would get leave to engage a Danish crew to navigate the ship back to Bordeaux, but instead of returning to that port he would take her to the appointed rendezvous, and deliver her to the Confederate officer appointed to command her.

The business arrangements relating to the management of affairs at Copenhagen involved some complications, and they were not finally settled until December 16th, 1864. All the details of this transaction are as fresh in my memory as if they had occurred within the current year. The ship was reported to be suitably provided with everything necessary for her navigation, and she had on board her battery, say one 300-pounder and two 70-pounder Armstrong guns, with a quantity of shot, shells, fuzes, etc., but no ammunition or small

arms.

In spite of the great value which even one iron-cased vessel thus armed would have been to the Confederate Government if she could be promptly placed at a given point on the Southern coast, I foresaw the intricacy and complexity of the arrangements necessary to accomplish such a purpose, and the merely physical difficulties at that season of the year were not to be overlooked.

When the rams were begun at Bordeaux with the full knowledge and approval of the Imperial Government, it was purposed, and was so stipulated, that they should be ready for sea in May, or, at the latest, in June, 1864. The vessels were of small size, and were designed for operations in the Mississippi river and the shoal harbours of the Gulf coast of the Confederate States. Their draught in their best fighting trim was to have been fourteen feet. To load them deeper would of course be admissible for the purpose of making a passage, but

under such conditions their qualities would be unfavourably affected, both as regards speed and buoyancy, and yet to get them across the Atlantic it would be necessary to weight them heavily with fuel and other stores. If there had been no interference with the work, and no prohibition of their delivery to the Confederate States, both rams would have been in our possession, outside of the river Gironde, in the early part of June, 1864, and we would have had mild summer weather to drop them safely over to their working ground, with the Azores, Nassau and Havana for coaling stations.

At the date of the proposition for the delivery of the Sphinx, it was approaching mid-winter, and the vessel was at Copenhagen, with all the intricacies of the Sound, the narrow waters between Denmark and Sweden, the tempestuous gales of the German Ocean, the dangers of the English Channel, and the fierce Biscay gales to encounter and overcome before she could reach a safe place of rendezvous to receive her ordnance stores and her fighting crew.

Besides this, the condition of affairs had meanwhile greatly changed in America. The weak fortifications at Mobile, and the mere pretence of a naval flotilla which the Confederate Government had been able to provide for the defence of that city, had proved wholly insufficient to resist the vigorous attack of Admiral Farragut's powerful fleet, and the bay of Mobile, with the adjacent inland waters communicating with New Orleans, were in complete possession of the Federal military and naval forces. The United States had also obtained control of the Mississippi from the northern boundary of the Confederacy to its delta, and they had got such a firm grip of the passes of the river, and of every approach to New Orleans, that an attempt to displace them, or even to

make such a naval demonstration in that quarter as would cause them serious apprehension, would have required a far greater force than one small ironclad ram.

Galveston was believed to be still in possession of the Confederate troops, but the Trans-Mississippi States had been completely dissevered from the remainder of the Confederacy, and an effort to accomplish anything for their defence by the despatch of so small a naval expedition to the only point accessible from the sea, and affording at the same time means of communication with the interior, appeared well-nigh Quixotic. If any effective aid could be rendered to the hard-pressed armies still gallantly holding General Grant at bay from behind the fieldworks of Richmond and Petersburgh, and striving to check Sherman's march through Georgia, that support must be sent to the Atlantic coast.

It was known in Europe that a combined naval and military attack was about to be made upon Wilmington. The Confederate forces in the south-west were so greatly reduced in numbers that it was quite manifest they could not protect the open country from devastating 'raids' and keep a sufficient force in General Sherman's front to check his march towards Savannah. In fact, he had already passed the last effective barrier at Atlanta, and there were only a few weak battalions between the head of his advancing columns and his objective point. The force available for the defence of Wilmington was too small to justify much expectation of a successful resistance, and General Lee's supremest efforts were barely sufficient to keep General Grant from breaking his lines, or turning the right of his entrenchments and so cutting him off from communication with the interior or from retreat. The enemy held the fortifications at the mouth of the Savannah river, and access to that port had long