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By Root 6578 0

was one of the first to be unmasked. Maury learned from a report in the newspapers that that project was out in the open. He immediately sent orders for the cruiser to leave England whatever her condition. The crew and stores were to sail on a separate ship and rendezvous in neutral waters. A messenger delivered a cryptic note to the lodgings where James Morgan had been hiding since his arrival in England. He was ordered to proceed with the utmost care to a house on Little St. James’s Street, where a “Mr. Grigson” would give him further instructions. Morgan hurried through the streets, hoping that he was not being followed. At the house he found half a dozen nervous Confederate officers. They jumped every time there was a knock at the door, fearing it was Consul Morse with the police. Nobody dared leave the house until well after sunset.

At half-past nine that evening [wrote Morgan] we all proceeded to a railway station where we took a train for White Haven, a little seaport about an hour’s ride from London. There we went to a small inn, where we met Commander Maury, Dr. Wheeden, and Paymaster Curtis, and were soon joined by others—all strangers to me. We waited at the inn for about a couple of hours; there was little, if any, conversation, as we were all too anxious and were all thinking about the same thing. In those two hours it was to be decided whether our expedition was to be a success or a failure. If Mr. Adams, the American Minister, was going to get in his fine work and balk us, now was his last opportunity.50

The Foreign Office had already issued instructions to detain Morgan’s vessel. But by some mysterious chance, the telegram remained in an out-box until after the port’s telegraph station closed for the day. The delay enabled the Japan to escape in the early hours of April 1, 1863.51 Eight days after leaving England, off the coast of Brittany, Matthew Maury’s cousin Commander William Lewis Maury hoisted aloft the Confederate flag, and the Japan began its service as CSS Georgia.

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The appearance on the high seas of a third Confederate commerce raider ratcheted up the already high tension between the United States and Royal navies. The U.S. blockading squadron at Mobile, for example—which was still smarting from the embarrassment of having allowed CSS Florida to escape—started firing live rounds at passing Royal Navy vessels, each time claiming to have mistaken the unambiguous appearance of a British warship for a civilian blockade runner.18.4 Conversely, British frigates patrolling the Caribbean were as unhelpful as possible toward the U.S. vessels trying to chase down blockade runners.

Admiral Milne, commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy’s operations in North America and the West Indies, was annoyed by his officers’ failure to maintain a strictly neutral stance. He despised the blockade runners and had ordered the fleet to refrain from giving them any assistance. Sometimes the so-called offense against the United States was simply tactless behavior, such as the fraternization between British crews and CSS Alabama when she sailed through Jamaican waters in January. But at other times, Milne detected more than a hint of partisanship. In February he removed HMS Petrel from Charleston after Captain George W. Watson and his officers became far too friendly with the blockaded townspeople.53 The last straw was a clearly biased report by Watson about the weakness of the blockading fleet. Milne upbraided him for “mixing himself so conspicuously and unnecessarily with the Confederate authorities,” and ordered Watson to a remote part of the Caribbean. “I cannot trust him either at Nassau or on the American coast,” Milne complained on March 20 to Sir Frederick Grey of the Admiralty.54 Milne also punished the captain of HMS Vesuvius, who had agreed to transport $155,000 in specie past the blockade at Mobile because, allegedly, it was interest owed to bondholders in Britain. (Fearful of the reaction in Washington, Lyons promptly dismissed the British consul who had arranged it.)

Milne made it his general rule to