But appearances sometimes beguile the wisest into error, and this overwhelming exhibition of England's naval power proved to be little more than a passing show; for these new fighting machines, formidable as they seemed, proved to be failures, and were summarily retired as unsuited even to play at the game of war on practice cruises.

Since then the art of naval architecture and gun-making is measured by colossus-like strides.

Meantime the personnel has changed. The exclusive province of Jack Tar has been invaded. The classic sailor no longer shifts ballast by a roll of his tobacco quid; his canvas wings, which once flapped to the melody of his whistle, have been shorn; his spars have been knocked down; the inspiration which he once drew from the whiskey-tot is now drawn from the coffeepot; his craft no longer drifts lazily through the doldrums of the tropics, but is driven through with the speed of the dolphin by the stoker and the engineer; his tarry palm has softened and his former dignities and glories have been appropriated by the hornyhanded wizard of machinery. Vulcan now rides in Neptune's barge.

It was during the rapid change and progress in naval architecture and ordnance in England and France that the great Rebellion in the United States broke forth with bewildering force. Inasmuch as the first movements of the Kearsarge were determined by the first effort to create a Confederate navy, a brief account of the latter seems unavoidable. On the 9th of February, 1861, the Confederate government was elected.

Commander Semmes, of the United States Navy, tendered his resignation from that service six days afterwards.

Three days later Semmes was ordered, on his own application, to the command of a small steamer, called the Havana, which plied between Cuba and New Orleans, and which, after fitting for the Confederate naval service, was named Sumter. It was not until the 30th of June following that Semmes succeeded in running the blockade off New Orleans. On the 3rd of July he began his notorious career by burning at sea the fine merchantman Golden Rocket, of Bangor, Maine. Seventeen other captures followed in rapid succession, seven of which were burned, and their destruction inflamed public passion to a degree never known before or since in this country. Semmes held eight men, taken from the Joseph Maxwell, as hostages, to be executed or otherwise disposed of, according to the action of the United States Government in the case of the prisoners

taken from the Savannah, a Confederate corsair which had been captured by the United States sloop Perry.

President Lincoln, by proclamation, April 15, 1863, declared that "Such persons will be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy."

Preparations were hurriedly made for the capture of the Sumter. The sloop of war Kearsarge had been built at the Kittery Navy Yard, Maine, and her construction was completed with the celerity which marked most of the movements of the government in those feverish times. From the date her keel was laid to the date of launching was three months. Within four months she had been rigged, manned, armed, and placed in commission. On the 15th of February, 1862, she steamed out of the port of Kittery under orders for Cadiz, in search of the Sumter.

The cold was intense. Frosty northern storms prevailed. Ice shrouded the Kearsarge from topmast to water-line. Officers and crew were wrapped in woolens. In their living apartments they fanned the chilling air with heated shot and swinging grates of burning charcoal, steam heat at that time not having been adopted for ships of war. Pitiless gales continued to sweep her through tumultuous seas, and, with indiscriminate violence, split her sails and carried away two boats. Buffeted by irresistible hurricanes, the ship was forced back upon her course, and for three days ran before the wind like a retreating foe, when, the gales moderating, she came about and renewed her struggles against heavy seas. For a new ship and a green crew these trials were severe.

After contending thus for seventeen days fairer weather set in, and on the 22d of February, the Island of Madeira rose before our vision.

Having procured new boats and replenished our supplies, we steamed away for Cadiz, where we cast anchor on the 4th day of March, 1862. The Sumter had preceded us three months earlier. Her reception there was inhospitable. Although Semmes represented his vessel as unseaworthy, he was ordered to depart within twenty-four hours. From this order he appealed to the government at Madrid, which authorized him to land prisoners and make repairs. Before actually commencing repairs he received peremptory order to depart within the short space of six hours. He again begged for an extension, which was conceded. Smarting under the ungracious treatment he had received, he steamed out of Cadiz harbor and, during the night, proceeded en route to Gibraltar.

The Sumter made Gibraltar Light as day was dawning, and, while moving rapidly with the current up the Strait, discovered two sails, distinctly American, near the African coast. Semmes diverged from his course to overtake them. His first victim was the Neapolitan. He thus describes the capture: "The cat ran close enough to parley with the mouse before she put her paw on it. She had been freshly painted with the old robber, the bald eagle, surrounded with stars gilded on her stern; her decks looked white and sweet after the morning's ablutions which she had just undergone; her sails were well hoisted and her sheets well home; in short she was a picture to look at, and the cat looked at her as a cat only can look at a sleek mouse."

Then, transferring the crew and passengers from the doomed ship to the Sumter, the corsair burned her to the water's edge, within sight of Europe and Africa, large numbers of the Gibraltar garrison and its inhabitants assembling at prominent points to witness the conflagration.

Semmes writes: "Half the town rushed to Europa Point and to the signal-station to watch the chase and capture."

At Gibraltar Semmes was welcomed with marked courtesy. Early the next morning after his arrival, officers of the garrison, and of the navy, called on board to pay their respects; the Admiral of the port, Sir Frederick Warden, supplied an anchor; the military commander, Sir William Codrington, interchanged courtesies; and he was dined by the 100th Canadian Regiment.

The success of Captain Semmes, when he first reached Cadiz, in obtaining permission from the Spanish Government to enter the Royal Docks for repairs, led to great exaltation of mind. While in the flush of this diplomatic success he addressed a letter to the London Times in which he bitterly denounced our Secretary of the Navy for characterizing the destruction of defenceless merchantmen at sea as "piratical warfare."

"Mr. Welles," he says, "also in imitation of the dirty and mendacious press of the Yankee states, calls me a pirate. He dares not send a ship of equal force to meet me; and if he dared to do so, I venture to say that officer would not dare to fight me. He knows better than this. He knows that I have been regularly commissioned as a ship of war of the Confederate States."

Such was the low estimate that he placed upon the ability, the sense

of duty, and the courage of his former comrades with whom he had been trained in the United States Navy.

Learning of the presence of the Sumter at Gibraltar, the Kearsarge left Cadiz on the 8th of March, and entered Gibraltar Bay the same evening.

Without waiting for the visitation of the local officials, the Kearsarge steamed rapidly through the shipping in the harbor and anchored within short cable's length of the dreaded corsair.

The unheralded and sudden appearance of the Union ship before this powerful fortress, and the appropriation of an anchorage so near the enemy, created something of a sensation. It became a matter of speculation, alike to the enemy and to the curious spectators on shore, as to what the next action of the Kearsarge would be. Altogether the scene was one not to be forgotten.

The flag of nearly every nation was flying from the shipping in the harbor. Semmes could be distinctly seen as he paced the deck of his ship, with head bent forward, both hands beneath his coat-tails, now and then removing one to twirl his pointed mustache.

On shore could be seen scarlet uniforms of the British soldiery mingling with dignified figures of gaily turbaned Moors and plainly garbed citizens.

As darkness approached the Sumter's crew gathered to the port side of their ship and sang several songs that aroused our crew to fighting pitch.

When the echoes of the rebel songs died away the Kearsarge crew responded with patriotic songs, closing with the tune of the "Star Spangled Banner," while the Stars and Stripes were lowered, as the sun went down, and "the men without a country "looked on in significant silence.

Under the Queen's proclamation of neutrality the Kearsarge was notified to leave within twenty-four hours after her entry, and the next morning she steamed across the bay to the Spanish port of Algeciras, some six miles distant, whence vigilant watch was kept on the enemy by day and night.

The severe strain to which our new ship had been exposed, during

the stormy passage across the Atlantic, rendered repairs unavoidable, and twice, with the friendly permission of the Spanish Government, we availed ourselves of the facilities of the royal dock yards at La Carracca, near Cadiz.

During our absence, Semmes, and nine of his officers, abandoned the Sumter and proceeded to Nassau, by way of Liverpool. We continued watch upon the abandoned Sumter for four months, when we were relieved by the little monitor Chippewa, which, owing to her diminutive size, was affectionately called "The Chip of War" by our sailors. She was the first that had ever before undertaken such a voyage as that across the Atlantic.

On the 12th of September we started on our cruise to Madeira and the Azores, during which time the Sumter was sold to a British merchant, against the protest of the American Consul, escaped the vigilance of the Chippewa during the impenetrable darkness of a tempestuous night, christened anew as the Gibraltar, made a successful voyage as a blockaderunner to a Southern port, and was finally lost in the North Sea.

For the second time the Kearsarge was compelled to make repairs, and again the Spanish Government extended its courtesies by allowing us the privileges of the royal docks at La Carracca, where we were detained nearly four months.

Winslow continued cruising between Madeira, the Azores, and Spain, including a visit to the Canaries.

To indicate the activity of the Kearsarge during this period, it may be mentioned that she cast anchor forty times, within four months, in the different ports fringing the English Channel.

The abandonment of the Sumter was suggestive of activity of Confederate vessels in other quarters.

The firm of Laird Brothers, of Liverpool, had built a vessel for the Confederates, which was designed to fight or run away from ships of the Kearsarge class. Mr. John Laird had retired from that firm and entered Parliament, where he rendered more efficient service to the Confederate cause than he had done as an active ship-builder.

The contract for the vessel built by the Lairds had been made and signed by the Confederate agent at Liverpool, Captain Bulloch, who had