A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [228]
But in America, Maury’s blunt and often captious behavior had made him as many enemies as admirers. The navy pushed him into retirement, although it relented and made him a commander after he fought to be readmitted. When the war began, Maury was fifty-five years old, happily married, and the father of nine children, having run the Naval Observatory in Washington for nearly seventeen years. But on April 20, 1861, though he neither owned slaves nor approved of slavery, Maury chose his native state of Virginia over his loyalty to the federal government. He walked out of the observatory for the last time with tears streaming down his face, leaving on the desk his sword, his naval uniform, and a letter of resignation to Abraham Lincoln.
Maury soon discovered that old quarrels had not died with the new Confederacy. It was unfortunate that his future ended up in the hands of three of his greatest rivals: Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Stephen Mallory. Maury’s pioneering work on torpedoes and mines received scant official support. When he received his orders in August 1862 to go on a purchasing mission to London, Maury assumed it was an attempt to consign him to oblivion.25 He knew there was already a clutch of agents in England competing with one another for scarce resources. After long, anguished discussions with his wife, Ann, the Maurys agreed that their youngest child, thirteen-year-old Matthew Jr., known as Brave, would accompany him to England. The rest of the family would try to live quietly in northern Virginia.
Maury and young Brave traveled to Charleston to wait for room to become available on a steamer running the blockade. As the weeks passed, Maury became a frequent guest at Ashley Hall, home of George A. Trenholm. Built in the Regency style according to Southern taste, the house was a skillful combination of intimidation and opulence. Few families could maintain such an establishment at those times, but the blockade had transformed Trenholm from the chairman of a middle-sized shipping firm into the wealthiest man in the South. Life at Ashley Hall was not only untouched by the war, it was better than ever. Dinner guests were treated to delicacies that had not been seen elsewhere in Charleston since 1861. Maury hardly noticed seventeen-year-old James Morgan at other end of Trenholm’s dinner table, looking uncomfortably hot in his woolen naval uniform. A random series of events had brought Morgan to Trenholm’s door. Since helping his English friend Francis Dawson, escape the overenthusiastic nursing of some female volunteers, Morgan had been transferred from one ship to another. His current posting was on a little ironclad still in dry dock. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, Morgan had taken to roaming aimlessly around Charleston until Trenholm took him under his wing. On the sultry night that brought Maury and Morgan together for the first time, Trenholm turned to the youth and “asked me if I would like to go abroad and join a cruiser,” recalled Morgan. “On being assured that I would give anything to have the chance, he returned to Commodore Maury and resumed his conversation about the peculiarities of the ‘Gulf Stream.’ ” The next morning, Morgan received orders from the secretary of the navy to accompany Maury to London. There, he was to report to James Bulloch for further instructions.26
Maury’s worst fears about his mission were confirmed when he arrived in England in late November 1862. The Confederates were low on funds and had been surviving on credit since the previous summer. Caleb Huse had warehouses full of precious guns, medicines, blankets, and shoes for Lee’s army that he could not afford to ship. James Bulloch himself had two half-completed