Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

‘ [721] I have been expecting every day for the last three years, to fall in with you, and here I am at last!’ I told him I was glad he had found me after so long a search. ‘Search!’ said he; ‘it is some such search as the Devil may be supposed to make after holy water. The fact is,’ continued he, ‘I have had constant visions of the Alabama, by night and by day; she has been chasing me in my sleep, and riding me like a night-mare, and now that it is all over, I feel quite relieved.’ I permitted the masters and crews of both these ships to hoist out, and provision their own boats, and depart in them for Singapore. The ships when overhauled were lying just inside of the light-ship, at the western entrance of the Strait of Malacca, and it was only pleasant lake or river sailing to Singapore. Having fired the ships, we steamed out past the lightship, and were once more in the Indian Ocean. We found on board one of the prizes a copy of the Singapore ‘Times,’ of the 9th of December, 1863, from which I give the following extract. At the date of the paper, we were at Pulo Condore, and the Yankee ships were still flocking into Singapore:—

‘From our to-day's shipping-list it will be seen that there are no fewer than seventeen American merchantmen at present in our harbor, and that they include some of the largest ships at present riding there. Their gross tonnage may be roughly set down at 12,000 tons. Some of these have been lying here now for upward of three months, and most of them for at least half that period. And all this, at a time when there is no dulness in the freight market; but, on the contrary, an active demand for tonnage to all parts of the world. It is, indeed, to us, a home picture—the only one we trust to have for many years to come—of the wide-spread evils of war in these modern days. But it is a picture quite unique in its nature; for the nation to which these seventeen fine ships belong has a Navy perhaps second only to that of Great Britain, and the enemy with which she has to cope, is but a schism from herself, possessed of no port that is not blockaded, and owning not more than five or six vessels no the high seas; and yet there is no apathy and nothing to blame on the part of the United States Navy. The tactics with which the Federals have to combat are without precedent, and the means to enable them successfully to do so have not yet been devised.’