Office of the Historian

Lord Lyons to Mr. Seward,.

Washington, May 15, 1863.

Sir: With reference to your notes of the 31st March last and 15th ultimo, and to my answers of the 2d and 16th ultimo, I have the honor to enclose an extract from a dispatch which I received yesterday from her Majesty’s consul at San Francisco, in answer to the telegram by which I directed him to communicate with the governor of Vancouver’s island, respecting the reports that vessels were being fitted out in that colony to cruise against American commerce.

I have the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

LYONS.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

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Extract from a dispatch from her Majesty’s consul at San Francisco to Lord Lyons, dated April 17, 1863.

“I had the honor to receive, at 6 o’clock last evening, your lordship’s telegram, and at once replied to it by telegraph.

“I have to-day written to Governor Douglass, in accordance with your instructions, and the reply will be received here about the end of April, should the steamer wait long enough at Esquimalt to enable his excellency to acknowledge receipt by return mail. I feel confident there is no foundation for the reports made to the United States government that attempts are being made to fit out a confederate privateer in Vancouver’s island. I see so many people from there, and am in such constant correspondence with the official and private residents of that island, that I should have been almost sure to hear if anything of that kind had been going on. I believe the idea to have originated in sundry articles in one of the Victoria papers, about two months ago, wherein it was stated that a confederate commodore was in Victoria, and that proposals had been made to purchase the screw steamship Thames for a privateer.

“The supposed commodore was Captain Manley, who was sent to Victoria by a firm in this city engaged in the Mexican trade, to ascertain if the Thames was a suitable vessel to run between this port and Mexico, and if so, to endeavor to purchase her.”