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Updated: June 12, 2025
We speak sympathetically about the six and seven thousand ton steamers that tramp across during the winter months at the present time, and yet it is less than fifty years since the whole of that trade was done by tiny brigs and barques who leaked and worked like Russian prams, but were handled with an ability that saved both them and their crews many times from destruction.
As you entered the harbor of that day, many sloops, schooners, brigs, barques, and ships obstructed your way; and you would see the wharves and the warehouses, such as they were, in full employment.
By four o'clock we were opposite Galatz, one of the most considerable commercial towns, with 8000 inhabitants, the only harbour the Russians possess on the Danube. Here we saw the first merchant-ships and barques of all kinds coming from the Black Sea. Some sea-gulls also, heralds of the neighbouring ocean, soared above our heads.
These vessels are the brigantines Cuba, Machias, Ben Dunning, Albert Adams and Naiad; and barques West Wind and Louisa Kilham, property of citizens of the United States, which States, as your Excellency is aware, are waging an unjust and aggressive war upon the Confederate States, which I have the honour, with this ship under my command, to represent.
The life must be like making one's home in a lighthouse, plus an eternal roll; and the line gives a weary time to the mail-steamers, as these never know exactly where the Bristol barques will be found. After hugging the coast and prospecting Biribi, we sighted the Drewins, whose natives are a powerful and spirited race, equally accustomed to either element.
Old Don Peralta, who had saved the golden galleon ten years before, had 'listed a number of negroes, and manned one or two barques with them. With the troops still in barracks, and these volunteers and pressed men, they had manned, in all "five great ships, and three pretty big barks." Their force may have numbered 280 men. One account gives the number, definitely, as 228.
He pushed his three barques boldly forward toward the watery sky-line; the rising and setting sun by day and the slowly circling stars by night were all-sufficient pilots; and so the ships flew onward, and, late though the season was, no tempest racked them, no swollen billow tossed them.
For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
The great ships had not sufficient men to fight their guns. They remained at anchor; but their crews went aboard the barques, so that the decks of the three men-of-war must have been inconveniently crowded. The Spaniards were dead to windwind of the pirates, so that they merely squared their yards, and ran down the wind "designedly to show their valour."
It blew very hard while they were at sea, and two barques parted company in the storm. One of them drove away to the eastward, and overtook John Coxon's company. The other was taken by the Spaniards. About the 20th or 21st of May, after several days of coasting, the ships dropped anchor on the north coast of the island of Quibo.
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