Blockade Running by Officers of the Royal Navy.

Transcribed from the New York Times by Terry Foenander.

The following article, published in the New York Times of Sunday, January 8, 1893, under the title, Under the Stars and Bars: Four English Officers who ran Blockades: Capt. Grosvenor Porter, Himself a Famous Blockade Runner, contributes a Chapter to History – Some of the Exploits of the Britons Told, gives an account of blockade running by some officers of the English Royal Navy, during the Civil War.

It has been left to Capt. Grosvenor Porter, one of the most daring blockade runners of the last war and a brother of that gallant Flag Lieutenant of the United States Navy who lost his life on the ramparts of Fort Fisher, to make known the names of not less than four British naval officers of high rank who, in the command of Confederate blockade-running vessels and under assumed names, lent their services during the war in opposition to the United States Government.

To a TIMES representative Capt. Grosvenor Porter said yesterday that the officers were Vice-Admiral Sir W.N. Wrighte Hewett, V.C., K.C.B.; Rear Admiral Charles Murray Anysley [Aynsley], C.B.; Capt. Hugh Talbot Burgoyne, V.C., and Capt. the Hon. Augustus C. Hobart [Hobart-Hampden].   Hobart, who commanded the blockade runner Don, was known as Capt. Roberts.   He was the same Hobart who afterward became Hobart Pasha of the Turkish Navy.   Anysley commanded the blockade runner Venus, under the title of Capt. Murray.   Burgoyne was known as Capt. Brown and Hewett had several aliases.

Capt. Porter says that Hobart was a full Captain in the British Navy when he took command of the Don.   Hobart ran the Don five times into Charleston and Wilmington.   On the sixth run he took a lay-off, sending the vessel over to Wilmington from Bermuda under his first officer.   The Don was captured on that run.   She was afterward converted into a Federal war ship.

Hobart and the other three officers secured two years’ leave of absence from their Government.   They wanted to assist the Confederates, and were also anxious for the sport and excitement to be afforded by blockade running.

Aynsley lost one vessel while running into Charleston and narrowly escaped capture.   He made the most of his runs in the Venus, and it was while in command of that ship that Porter one day, while in command of the blockade runner Phantom, mistook him in thick weather for a Federal cruiser.   Porter attempted to run Aynsley down, and only made out that he was, like himself, a blockade runner when a few ship’s lengths distant.   The discovery was made in the nick of time, and, though the Phantom grazed the Venus, the latter ship was not injured.   Aynsley and Porter conversed with each other on that occasion.

Capt. Porter further said yesterday that after the war he saw Hobart in London, and at the clubs talked with him regarding the incidents they had both been through.

“I was the only man in the blockade-running business,” Porter said, “that knew the identity of those men.   Hobart told me that he got sudden information from friends to return quickly to England, as there was fear that the presence of British officers with the Confederate blockade runners would become known, and the British Foreign Office was likely to apprehend difficulties arising.”

The official British Navy lists show in the Admiralty edition of June 20, 1862, that the Hon. Augustus C. Hobart, then a Commander, was in command of the British gun vessel Foxhound, stationed in the Mediterranean.   Hewett was in command of the sloop gun vessel Rinaldo on the North American station.   Burgoyne was unattached.   The records also show that during the years 1863, 1864, and a part of 1865 these same officers were not on duty, and the British Navy lists do not mention what they were doing during those years.   The records further show that both Hewett and Burgoyne were wearing during thos years the Victoria Cross, Hewett for gallantry before Sebastopol and at Inkerman with the Naval Brigade, and Burgoyne for gallantry in the Black Sea; also that these two officers were the only officers of their rank in the British Navy who at that period were entitled to wear the Victoria Cross. 

Capt. Porter says that Hobart and the other British naval officers mentioned were induced, largely by the offers of British merchants, backed by their own natural inclinations, to take commands in the business of blockade running.   It was proved that men of Hobart’s stamp would not flunk under gun fire.   They knew the smell of powder.   Besides, they were trained and careful navigators, and the chances of a ship making a successful run in the hands of one of them were greater than under a man who cared not at all for the excitement of the work and the lessons it afforded.   When Hobart had the Don cleared from an English port for the Madeiras, it was under his first officer, who held an English Master’s certificate.   Hobart joined the Don off Gravesend and ran down to Madeira in her, ostensibly as a passenger, but in realty her Captain.

Vice Admiral Hewett was serving as Captain of the British warship Rinaldo in American waters when the war broke out.   His vessel was in Hampton Roads when the Merrimac appeared, and when that vessel, after destroying the Cumberland and Congress, ran close down to the Rip Raps Hewett’s crew of English sailors were permitted to man the rigging and cheer the Merrimac.   Hewett’s men saw the Monitor-Merrimac fight, and it was soon after that engagement that Hewett obtained his leave of absence.   He was compelled on one occasion when running the blockade to run his vessel ashore to avoid capture.   Hewett is the same flag officer who commanded the British naval forces in Egypt during Lord Wolseley’s late campaign.

Aynsley was senior flag officer of the big British ironclad Monarch a few years ago, and was aboard that ship when she came near sinking.   Aynsley is spoken of by Porter as being a man of wonderful nerve and pluck.

Burgoyne was a Flag Captain in the British navy when he was lost with the entire crew of the British war ship Captain on September 7, 1870.   The Captain, it may be remembered, was an attempt on the part of the British to incorporate the Monitor idea into their sea-going battle ships.   The turning turtle of the Captain demonstrated in the loss of Capt. Burgoyne and about 400 British sailors the impracticability of the Monitor type of craft as applied to sea-going, sail-rigged vessels.

Capt. Grosvenor Porter, who has made known to history for the first time the names of the British officers actually serving against the United States Government, is the same Porter of whom mention was made in THE TIMES of Nov. 13 last in connection with the chase of the blockade runner Phantom by the Federal war ship Connecticut.   That chase, which extended over a stretch of ninety miles along the North Carolina coast, and was finally joined in by as many as eight Federal war vessels, consisted of a running fire from first to last.   The account of the chase has been handed down in naval annals as one of the most obstinate on record, and for sheer exhibition of nerve on the part of the chased was perhaps unexcelled during the war.

The Phantom, it will be recalled, was attempting to pierce the Wilmington blockade, and this she tried by endeavoring to skirt down the Carolina coast in broad daylight.   Although shot and torn to pieces by her pursuers, her commander only gave up the attempt to get through on finding that the entire blockading fleet before Wilmington had been aroused by the distant fire of the chase.   It was then, and not until then, that the Phantom was beached.   Her entire crew escaped.

In the TIMES’s account it was said in reference to Capt. Porter that “none of the blockade runners still living appears to be able to tell what finally became of him.   The impression is that he died in some foreign waters.   He was an American through and through, they all say, and always gloried in being able to do with his commands what no British blockade-running Captain would dare attempt.”

For the information of those who believe Grosvenor Porter to be dead, it can be said that he is not only living, but living in New York City in all the luxury that becomes a blockade runner who made seventeen successful round trips.   In personal appearance Capt. Porter is slightly below the medium in height, with a well-knit figure that seems to be made up of a bundle of nerves.   He has a finely-chiseled face, set off by a deep bronze which could only have been acquired by long years spent at sea.   When it is known that Porter was only twenty two years of age at the time he commanded the Phantom, in 1864, it is seen that he today is not over fifty years old.

Although Capt. Porter has spent at least thirty years of his life in the hardest kind of sea service, he strikes one more as a man who has lived mostly among the clubs.   He dresses in a fashionable manner, and so far as outward appearances go, one could not say that he knew the difference between a weather earing and a hand cart.

To THE TIMES’s representative Porter said that he had enjoyed a laugh at the expense of his old fellow blockade runners who believed him to be dead.   “No wonder, though,” he exclaimed, “that they should have thought me out of this world.   I have not seen the Carolina coast more than once since the war.

“My career as a blockade runner was entirely in the capacity of an officer of the Confederate States Navy.   I never bothered with obtaining commodities for commercial use.   I wanted every square inch of room aboard for ammunition and arms.   When I beached the Phantom to the northward of Wilmington the vessel was filled with arms and various munitions of war.   Nearly all my cargoes were obtained at Bermuda, while the majority of the commercial cargoes were gotten at Nassau.   In all, I made seventeen round trips during the war.   The majority of these trips were made into Wilmington.   I knew that port fairly well.   Charleston I tried several times until my pilot grounded me in the Beach Channel, just off the end of the Sullivan Island breakwater.

“The Phantom was one of the best vessels the South possessed.   She was a propeller craft, and though I never rated her a fast ship, I do know that I once covered nine miles with her in 30 minutes.   I was coming out of Wilmington at the time, and the night was dark.   Just as I crossed the bar I made out a launch on the starboard bow.   My hand just then was on the engine-room telegraph.   I at once rang full speed ahead and gave the ship a port helm with the view of running the launch down.   But the Phantom could not make the short curve necessary, and as I swept past the boat I leaned over the bridge rail and found vent to my feelings in singing out:

“’If I had a grate bar here I would sink you.’

“In another instant I had disappeared in the darkness, while behind me I descried a rocket flying skyward.   It came from the launch and was a signal to the fleet that a blockade runner was standing across the bar.   I knew that from the direction of the rocket I was supposed to be running due east from the bar.   I had not yet fully righted my helm, and, although my first intention was to run straight out, I now jammed the helm hard over again and kept down the coast.   I recall looking at my watch as I crossed the bar and just before I sighted the launch.   When I rang full speed ahead, I at the same instant closed my watch.   Down the coast were three lone trees which could be made out on the beach on the darkest night.   They served as one of our many private marks.   They were distant from the bar nine miles.   As I made the trees out abeam I looked again at my watch.   Thirty minutes had not elapsed since I last glanced at it.”

With the exception of the four British naval officers mentioned and a number of others whom Capt. Porter did not name, the majority of English blockade running Captains could not be depended upon for much exhibition of nerve and dash.   They might be good seamen, Porter said, but it was only an American who would take one chance out of twenty and consider the odds at that big in his favor.   Of the British naval officers, Hobart and Aynsley were the most daring.   Hobart’s ship, the Don, took tremendous risks – greater, in fact, than was ever taken by any ship in the course of the war commanded by an Englishman, and the inference drawn by Capt. Porter is to the effect that the performances of the Don were attracting too much attention to that vessel on the part of the United States naval officers.   A vessel as small as the Don, which would run into a whole fleet of war ships apparently for the mere fun of it, and, what was more, usually get through in safety, early led to the suspicion that she was commanded by some man of naval training.

Hobart’s continued displays led to secret investigations of the Don’s commander, and knowledge on the part of high officials of the United States Government of the real character of the Don’s Captain, Roberts, is now believed to have been the cause of the British Foreign Office compelling Hobart to give up his command.   At any rate, he suddenly turned over the ship to his first officer and quit Bermuda for England.

The Don was fitted with twin screws and drew less than ten feet of water.   She was built expressly for the blockade and was constructed of steel throughout.   During the latter part of the war, and while a Federal war ship, Admiral Porter used her as a flagship.   On a run made soon after the war to Haiti, Admiral Porter nearly lost the Don in a hurricane in the Gulf Stream.

In an account in THE TIMES, as told by Frank C. Bonneau, a former Lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy, Capt. Porter is described as being captured in 1864 off Wilmington at the same time that Bonneau was boarded by the crew of the Federal ship Niphon.   Bonneau was standing in toward Wilmington bar in company with four other ships, in which fleet Porter had a command.   Bonneau was in the lead, with Porter next.   Suddenly Bonneau detected a Federal war ship close aboard, and, fearing that the five runners were making too conspicuous a string, Bonneau attempted to shake all four ships off by steering to sea again.   This he did, but inside of an hour Bonneau, in his endeavor to run down the Niphon and Hiquah [Howquah] on the Wilmington Bar, was fouled, boarded, and captured.   Three other blockade runners were captured the same evening, and Bonneau always supposed that Porter’s ship was among the number.

It now appears that Porter’s vessel was the only one which succeeded that night in entering the Cape Fear River.   The facts are that when the string of five ships was standing in for Wilmington Bar Porter was as anxious to shake himself clear of Bonneau and the other ships as was Bonneau to rid himself of Porter.   The five vessels were standing toward the bar from the northward of east.   The night was dark, but not so dark as to make indiscernible a ship distant 400 yards.

Suddenly Porter observed Bonneau put his helm a-port and circle off to the northward.   Porter had the Giraffe at the time, a side-wheel craft fitted with feathering buckets.   Instead of following Bonneau’s example and porting his own helm, Porter merely slowed down and peered ahead, his wheels in the meantime barely tripping the water.   Well ahead the Giraffe’s commander could make out the dull outlines of a war vessel slowly moving down the coast.   Bonneau had seen the same craft, and she was the cause of his sudden swerving off from his course.

Porter kept his eyes riveted on the black spectre ahead, and as the form of the war ship became gradually dimmer he rang to go ahead slow, steering, in the meantime, almost directly on the course taken by the Federal craft.   The vessels following Porter had seen Bonneau’s move and had each of them ported their helms in accordance with the example of the leader.   This left Porter alone, and the latter, with his eyes strained ahead, followed down in the wake of the Federal ship.   Gradually he worked in closer, then edged up to the bar, and crossed it under full speed.

Just as he was crossing he saw over his shoulder the gleam of a rocket, the signal that a blockade runner was in sight.   The rocket which Porter saw was the signal of Bonneau’s discovery.   Bonneau, after circling to the north, pierced the outer cordon of the enemy and actually pierced the inside cordon.   He might yet have gotten through but for the presence of the two gunboats Niphon and Hiquah [Howquah], which had taken posts right in the bar channel.   Bonneau attempted to run the Niphon down, but that vessel sheered just in time to save herself.   Bonneau’s vessel was fouled, and he was boarded.   At the time when Bonneau had reached the bar Porter was at anchor in the Cape Fear River, under shelter of the guns of Fort Caswell.

When asked to explain why it was that the old blockade runners now living who were known to have made fortunes during the war were today, for the most part, poor men, Capt. Porter said that the blockade business was like nearly any other business in which men suddenly made large sums of money.   They expected the business to last.   They were not contented to take the enormous salaries paid to them and to save money out of those salaries, but they must invest in new ships.

Now, ships were about as expensive an investment during the war as could be found, and many a blockade-running Captain who had made $50,000 or $75,000 on successful runs invested nearly the whole of it in a ship interest.   Blockade running began to pay enormously only in 1864 and then did not last more than eighteen months.   At the close of the war ship after ship was taken in Wilmington, and one blockade runner was actually taken at the wharves in Charleston all loaded and ready to go to sea.

The men who made money were those who held on to their salaries of $7,000 to $10,000 for each successful run, and who made all the extra money they could from a spare bale of cotton or two.   Cotton paid as high at one time as $1.62 per pound, and a couple of extra 500-pound bales carried through the blockade made a neat little sum in addition to one’s salary.

Then, too, a great number of blockade runners suddenly found themselves in possession of more money than they had ever handled in their whole previous lifetime, and, hardly appreciating its value, gambled and threw their money away in every possible form known.   The war ending left many of these men as high and dry as they had been in years gone by, and as a natural course they again drifted back into their old callings, some as masters and Captains of merchant ships and others as pilots on the Southern bars.

Capt. Porter says that the Blakely English rifle used recently by Dr. Justin in his experiments in firing dynamite projectiles is one of three Blakely guns he ran into the Confederacy in the course of the war.   One of the guns was mounted, he says, at Fort Fisher; a second one was sent to the defenses before Mobile, but where the third one went Capt. Porter does not recall.   The gun Dr. Justin used was among a lot bought up by a Boston firm after the war, and lay unused in Boston for a number of years until Dr. Justin happened to run across it and impressed it into service.

On the close of the struggle Capt. Porter went to England, and for a number of years ran English steamers under English certificates.   He finally worked back to America, and entered the service of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.   While with the Pacific Mail he commanded alternately for a number of years the Colon and the Acapulco.   He ran at various times nearly all the steamers of the Pacific Mail doing service on the Atlantic side.   Capt. Porter has given up going to sea, and is now enjoying life at his ease.   He occasionally amuses himself in yachting.   He is in every respect a man still in the prime of life, and doubtless would be one of the first to seek hazardous employment again if there was any surety of finding it without too much hunting.

Additional notes:     Charles Murray Aynsley was born at Olveston, Cloucestor, on September 21, 1821.   He died at Droxford, county of Hampshire, England, on April 1, 1901.

Hugh Talbot Burgoyne was born on July 17, 1833, and was killed in a gale, while aboard the HMS Captain, September 7, 1870.   His remains are indicated to have been buried at Brompton Cemetery in London.

© Terry Foenander.

November, 2007.