Mr. Harvey to Mr.
Seward.
No. 199.]
Legation of the United States,
Lisbon,
January 29, 1863.
Sir: My attention has been drawn to the
enclosed pararaph from a recent newspaper published at Baltimore, which
mentions a fact of some consequence in connexion with the criminal
proceedings of the Alabama.
The bark Agrippina is the name of the vessel which appeared at the island
of Terceira, Azores, in August last, with munitions of war, &c., for
the Alabama, when she entered and was illegally fitted out in the port
of Angra before commencing the depredations which took place off
Flores.
I have no doubt that the vessel now mentioned is the same one which, by a
concerted arrangement, transported the means of equipment to the Azores,
and, in that view, that she ought to be made the object of special
surveillance by our ships-of-war at home and abroad. Since it would seem
to be clear that she is to be, as she has already been, used as a
transport in the service of the insurgents for coal and other supplies
at appointed places of rendezvous, I shall notify all the naval
commanders within my reach to this effect.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
[Page 1300]
The Steamer Alabama.—An English bark provides
the Alabama with four hundred tons of coal.
A letter from Granada, West Indies, to a mercantile house in New
York, gives the following report of the steamer Alabama:
“Granada, December 6, 1862.
“The American whaling schooner C. L. Sparks, of Provincetown, Captain
Harvey Sparks, arrived here yesterday from the isle of Blanquilla,
about 170 miles to the westward of this place, and under the
Venezuelan government. She reports that while lying there at anchor
on the evening of the 21st ultimo, the confederate steamer Alabama
and the English bark Agrippina, of Scarboro’, England, coal-laden,
arrived there from Martinique. The Alabama took on board from the
Agrippina 400 tons of coal, and both vessels sailed again on the
evening of the 25th. Captain Sparks also reports having been
detained on board the Alabama as a prisoner during her stay, and his
vessel strictly guarded. He was told by Captain Semmes had he caught
him three miles from the land under canvas, he would have burned his
vessel. The Alabama has a heavy broadside and two large rifled pivot
guns, and had destroyed twenty-three vessels. The last one was on
the 8th of November—a Boston ship from the East Indies with a very
valuable cargo.”
This must have been the T. B. Wales, already reported.
