f the blockade-running companies were opposed to
any project for increasing the facilities of entrance to or exit from
Wilmington. The profits were of course proportionate to the risks, and
these heartless worshipers of Mammon, having secured the services of the
best captains and pilots, would have rejoiced to see every
blockade-runner, but their own, captured. They protested vehemently, but
unavailingly, against interference with their pilots.

[11] General Johnston's Narrative page 374. It appears from the same
distinguished authority that of all that gallant array not more than
5,000 were ever reassembled; and a large portion of these continued
without arms to the end of the war.

CHAPTER XIII.

Cruise of the Chickamauga.--Mr. Mallory's inefficiency.--Troubles
in Bermuda.--The three Weeks.--End of the Cruise.

In the latter part of September, 1864, I was ordered to the command of
the "Chickamauga," a double screw steamer converted into a so-called man
of war. She was one of those vessels before alluded to in this
narrative, as partly owned by the Confederate Government, and was taken
possession of by the government authorities with scant regard for the
rights of the other owners, who had no alternative but to accept
inadequate compensation for their share of the vessel. Her battery
consisted of a twelve-pounder rifled gun forward, a sixty-four pounder
amidships, and a thirty-two pounder rifle aft, all on pivots. She was
more substantially built than most of the blockade-runners, and was very
swift, but altogether unfit for a cruiser, as she could only keep the
sea while her supply of coal lasted. She was schooner rigged, with very
short masts, and her sails were chiefly serviceable to steady her in a
sea-way. Under all sail and _off_ the wind, without steam, she could not
make more than three knots with a stiff breeze; _by_ the wind under the
same circumstances, she had not even steerage way. Captain J. T. Wood,
of the Confederate Navy, had just returned from a "raid" along the
Northern coast, and the incompetent Secretary of the Navy conceived, no
doubt, that he had hit upon a happy idea when it occurred to his muddled
brain, to send these vessels out to harass the coasting trade and
fisheries of the North.[12] As a mere question of policy, it would have
been far better to have kept them employed carrying out cotton and
bringing in the supplies of which the army was so sorely in need. The
attac