ding warlike equipment, a ship, even though her
construction were such as to indicate that she was destined to become a
ship of war, might be built by private parties in British yards. The
three main points requiring careful observance by the South were
concealment of government ownership and destination, no war equipment
and no enlistment of crew in British waters.

The principal agent selected by the South to operate on these lines was
Captain J.D. Bullock, who asserts in his book descriptive of his work
that he never violated British neutrality law and that prevailing legal
opinion in England supported him in this view[967]. In March, 1862, the
steamer _Oreto_ cleared from Liverpool with a declared destination of
"Palermo, the Mediterranean, and Jamaica." She was not heard of until
three months later when she was reported to be at Nassau completing her
equipment as a Southern war vessel. In June, Adams notified Russell
"that a new and still more powerful war-steamer was nearly ready for
departure from the port of Liverpool on the same errand[968]." He
protested that such ships violated the neutrality of Great Britain and
demanded their stoppage and seizure. From June 23 to July 28, when this
second ship, "No. 290" (later christened the _Alabama_) left Liverpool,
Adams and the United States consul at Liverpool, Dudley, were busy in
securing evidence and in renewing protests to the Government. To each
protest Russell replied in but a few lines that the matter had been
referred to the proper departments, and it was not until July 26, when
there was received from Adams an opinion by an eminent Queen's Counsel,
Collier, that the affidavits submitted were conclusive against the
"290," that Russell appears to have been seriously concerned. On July
28, the law officers of the Crown were asked for an immediate opinion,
and on the thirty-first telegrams were sent to Liverpool and to other
ports to stop and further examine the vessel. But the "290" was well
away and outside of British waters[969].

The _Alabama_, having received guns and munitions by a ship, the
_Bahama_, sent out from England to that end, and having enlisted in the
Confederate Navy most of the British crews of the two vessels, now
entered upon a career of destruction of Northern commerce. She was not a
privateer, as she was commonly called at the time, but a Government
vessel of war specially intended to capture and destroy merchant ships.
In short her true c