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404 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

donald, a transport on the Cape Fear River, and when the
Confederate privateer Retribution sent into Wilmington a prize
schooner, which she had captured at sea, in charge of one of
the Retribution’s officers named Jordan, who had shipped with
Capt. Joseph Price in Wilmington, I assisted in towing that
vessel from the bar to Wilmington, and of course saw much of
Jordan.

When I was captured by the Montgomery, I was taken to
Portsmouth Navy Yard, where we were boarded by a Federal
officer in a captain’s uniform, who proved to be none other than
my quondam Confederate friend Jordan, who had gone over to
the enemy, and who immediately recognized me and informed
against me.

“T was then put in irons and sent on board the U. 8S. man-of-
war Sabine, where I was most kindly treated by its commander,
Captain Loring, and while a prisoner on his ship I was repeat-
edly approached by the Federal officers, who offered to pay any
sum I would name if I would join their fleet off Fort Fisher
and take part as a pilot in their attack against my home. I
told them that the United States Government did not have
enough money to induce me to accept such a proposition, and I
accordingly remained a prisoner at Point Lookout until after
the war was over.

“T may add that while I was a prisoner on the Sabie, two
of the Cape Fear pilots, C. C. Morse and John Savage, were
brought on board as prisoners, under suspicion of being pilots,
and, although they were intimate friends of mine, I took par-
ticular pains to treat them as total strangers and paid no atten-
tion to them, lest it might get them into further trouble. They
were much relieved when they discovered my purpose. Savage
was subsequently released, but Morse, having been identified
later by some other means, was made a prisoner with me until
the end of the war.

“The monotony of prison life affords so few incidents that
my experience is hardly worth recalling, and yet I remember
some diversions, which gave us much merriment at the time.

“While our friends of the Lilian were confined for several
weeks in a casemate of Fort Macon, that garrison consisted of
what the Yankees called the First Regiment of North Carolina
Volunteers. These men were known to us, however, as ‘Buffa-
loes,’ and they were a mean lot, as can be imagined from their
having turned against their native State in time of great stress

 

       
 
      
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
    
 
   
 
      
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
      
     
     
      
 
   
     
      
 
   
     
     
 
      
   
   
 
        
     
   
   
   
     
   
   
 
      
 
      
   
 
        
      
 
     
   

Blockade Running 405

of war. Every day an officer and a guard took us outside our
gloomy casemate and permitted us to stretch our legs along the
beach, while we gazed with longing eyes across the intervening
sound to Dixie Land. The marsh grass was full of sand fid-
dlers, which scuttled away at our approach. I pretended to be

_ Surprised and asked the guard what these things were, saying

that they would be called lobsters in my country if they were
much larger. The old renegade looked at me with a most con-
temptuous expression and replied: ‘You know what they are;
you’ve got millions of them at Smithville, whar you come from.’

‘Another daily experience was the persistent, though unsuc-
cessful, effort of the officer of the day to tease out of our young
purser, James Sprunt, whom he thought an easy mark on
account of his youth (17 years), betrayal of our pilot, little
dreaming that we were five Wilmington pilots.

“A warm attachment began in that prison life between Mr.
Sprunt and myself, which has been true and steadfast through
all these intervening years. We little thought then that our
lives would be so long united in the bonds of Christian fellow-
ship and commercial enterprise.

“During my subsequent confinement on the Sabine as a pris-
oner of war, a large number of blockade runners who had been
captured at sea were brought to that school-ship for confinement,
and Captain Loring tried in every way to surprise those sus-
pected of being pilots into an admission of the fact. One fine
day, while the prisoners were lying on the deck, he, looking like
an old sea dog, bluff and hearty, paced up and down among
them, and suddenly turning on his heel called out: ‘AII you
North Carolinians stand up quick!’ I cast my eyes over a
number of our pilots, fearing they would be taken by this
surprise and betray themselves, but not a man stirred, and old
Loring, who was really a good fellow and kind to us, went on
his way.

“I hope it may not be amiss, in the conclusion of these
reminiscences, to allude to the fact that, although I have been
all these years engaged as a Cape Fear pilot, in the duties of
my vocation, it has pleased God to call me also to the higher
duty of preaching His gospel, as a Methodist minister, and to
make me the humble instrument, in His hands, of guiding some
of my fellow-men to their eternal rest, as I have guided the

ships to their haven.
“There was a moral lesson, to those who heeded, in the