Galveston, April 14, 1865
Dear News: -- The poetically inclined youth, who has read
Scott’s description of the chase,* and in fancy heard "the deep-mouthed
blood-hound’s heavy bay," the "bark and whoop and wild halloo,"
following the varying phases of the run till the weary quarry had escaped his pursuers,
and heard the baffled dogs howling in rage and chagrin over their long and bootless race,
can still have but a faint conception of the exciting chase witnessed on the Gulf, and
closing in full view of this city, a few days since.
The game, so fiercely sought, was a fox – not the
Reynard of rural sport, or even the Swamp Fox of South Carolina, in the days of the
American Revolution; but Fox of English birth and Southern proclivities, and making its
run on the sea instead of through the marsh and the brake. He is backed by Jeff Davis
against the hungry pack that old Abe Lincoln has set to seek their prey on the coast of
the South. The run, not inaptly, took place on the 1st of April, and the hunters were
badly fooled.
This fox is steel-clad, iron-lunged, breathes flame and
smoke, and goes off with celerity whenever Yankee intruders seek to become too familiar.
She is reported to be commanded by one Capt. S. Adkins, of South Carolina origin, and
connected intimately with the descendants of Martin’s men. The pilot who guided the
devious chase, and baffled the craft and stern pursuit of the Yankees, was a quiet,
self-possessed and fearless inhabitant of this city, named Henry Watson. At 6 o’clock
in the morning, while the Fox was moving under easy steam, some eighty miles off
Galveston harbor, waiting, like the clan of MacGregor, for the night, a column of black
smoke was suddenly seen to shoot up some miles astern, where the crafty Yankees had placed
cruizers [sic.] to watch for blockade runners, as a point at where the day light might
show them approaching or leaving the coast, while the main fleet was set to watch the bar,
like dogs at the entrance of a lair. When the chase opened, the pursuer was about eight
miles astern. It was immediately decided that it was not necessary to wait for night for
the Fox to seek a den but, like Lady Macbeth’s visitors, to "go at
once." But here was the difficulty: in running from one foe she must run on or past a
dozen more – all dogs of war of the most savage breed. Her course was taken for the
coast, about sixteen miles to the eastward of this city, in order, as far as possible, to
avoid the fleet. The Fox had a full stomach for a long race: she had not only
taken in several hundred barrels of beef and pork, but a miscellaneous stock of saltpetre,
lead, iron implements, and other heavy articles of diet, hard to digest, and which she was
not bound to carry as an extra weight under any rule known to sportsmen. Sir Walter’s
chase was a sort of dead-heat at the close –
Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
Nor farther might the quarry strain
But, in this case, the friends of the Fox might well have
repeated the advice given to the flat-boatmen by his friend, "go it, old fellow,
he’s a gainin’ on you." The Fox soon began to obey the bible
injunction to lay aside every weight that that might retard her progress, and made,
apparently, direct for the beach, far to the eastward of the bar, closely pursued by her
more fleet antagonist, sanguine either of the capture or destruction of the fugitive. But
as, when the poet’s hero "already glorying in his prize" exulted in the
anticipated destruction of his game
For the death wound and death halloo,
Mustered his strength, his whinyard drew,
The wily quarry shivered the shock,
And turned him from the opposing rock,
When dashing down a darksome glen,
Soon lost to hound and hunter’s ken.
So our Fox, when apparently about to dash herself
on the beach, suddenly turned square off to the Southwest and made for the Pass as if
"all the fiends from heaven who fell" had joined the chase – as, in fact,
many of them had, for by this time the whole squadron was belching smoke, steam, fire,
shot and shell, as though they would tear the fugitive in more shreds than ever poor
Reynard was rent into by the largest pack of hounds.
The Fox kept close to the shore, while one or two
of her pursuers, forced to remain in deeper water, kept alongside, firing broadsides as
fast as they could load; and the whole fleet fired up and hastened from their anchorage to
try to intercept the fugitive rebel. Shot, shell, grape, shrapnell [sic.], every missile
which the ingenuity of Satan and his children, the Yankees, have invented, was thrown at,
around, over, and in the waters beneath the doomed victim. Elongated shell and shot
shrieked before, behind and over her, fell and exploded around and above her, or struck
the water, and ricochetted [sic.] over her decks like ________, well, like a flock of
sheep over a pair of bars. Strange to say, although hundreds of shots were fired, but four
took effect. An ugly shell, a foot and a half long, exploded a few yards from the ship,
and a portion of it burst the steel plate two feet above the water, but the missile
rebounded and fell into the sea. A ten inch shell, nearly spent, came over the rail on one
side and passed out beneath it on the other without doing harm, though the wind fanned a
couple of persons who stood near. The shrouds were cut beneath another as he ascended, but
this Daniel was as little hurt as his namesake in the among the lions. A piece of shell
cut the ‘scape pipe above the deck, but "nobody was hurt" and no one
scared. There were some old veterans, Morgan’s men and others who has escaped from
Fort Douglas, on board, who looked upon the whole affair as a very small one; or, being
passengers, took no interest in it, and the officers and crew seemed to liffe [?] it as a
matter of course. They received three cheers, which greeted them as they steamed gaily
into port with the utmost composure, and did not appear, like a man answering a fulsome
toast, to regard it as the proudest moment of their lives; in fact, they do not seem at
all proud, though they fill the bill for an old-time Mississippi steamer.
A bully boat and a bully crew,
A dandy mate and a captain too!
