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In 1848 an English merchant-vessel, the Three Sisters, was taken possession of by the notorious Riff pirates, and towed close in to the shore on the coast of the Mediterranean, after her master and the crew had fortunately escaped. Commander McCleverty, of the Polyphemus, was at once despatched to retake the brig. On approaching the shore he found a force of 500 men drawn up to defend their prize.
I have known one of our brethren put into a chest, with very few air-holes, and lowered into the hold of a merchant-vessel, with considerable roughness, where he was left many hours before he could be released." Gabrielle changed color. "Never mind," said she, in a low voice, and pressing her father's hand. "What man has done man may do, though I am but a woman who say it."
It offered no port of call, nor means of revictualling. There was nothing to encourage ships to take notice of it. At the same time it was not impossible that a war-ship or a merchant-vessel might come in sight. It was advisable therefore to find some way of attracting attention, and showing that the island was inhabited.
The ocean is the sphere of the law of nations; and any merchant-vessel on the seas is by that law under the protection of the laws of her own nation, and may claim immunity, unless in cases in which that law allows her to be entered or visited.
Paine was unable to accept the passage offered him in the frigate, and returned in a merchant-vessel in the autumn of the next year . The excitement had not subsided. Early in October, the "Philadelphia Gazette" announced that "a kind of tumultuous sensation was produced in the city yesterday evening in consequence of the arrival of the ship Benjamin Franklin from Havre.
A sum of about a hundred pounds was scraped together for his expenses, and it was arranged that he should write weekly letters at the rate of two guineas a letter. In the autumn of 1831 he sailed in a merchant-vessel for Havre, whence he journeyed to Paris in November.
Among those made by the young queen was a cloak of feathers, a kind of garment which had become exceedingly scarce in the Sandwich Islands. Freycinet was about to set sail again, when he learnt from an American captain that a merchant-vessel was lying off the island of Miow, having a large quantity of biscuit and rice on board, which there was no doubt might be purchased.
Arrived at Monrovia, where we find the Porpoise, with six native prisoners on board, who were taken at Berebee, as being concerned in the murder of Captain Farwell and his crew, two years ago. To accomplish their capture, the Porpoise was disguised as a barque, with only four or five men visible on deck, and these in Scotch caps and red shirts, so as to resemble the crew of a merchant-vessel.
George Hastings, and the H. C. steamer Diana, having just returned from an expedition to Acheen, whither they had been dispatched by the commander-in-chief, to inquire into and demand redress for an act of piracy, committed on an English merchant-vessel. An account of the expedition has already been published.
A glance at the career of the most famous of all the Confederate cruisers, the "Alabama," will be interesting. This vessel was built in England, ostensibly as a merchant-vessel, although her heavy decks and sides, and her small hatchways, might have warned the English officials that she was intended for purposes of war.
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