I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

   H.C.  BLAKE,
   Lieutenant Commanding.

Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, Washington.

For a further account of this action from the journal of one of the junior officers, see Appendix.]

The prize proved to be the United States gunboat Hatteras, Lieut.-Commanding H.C.  Blake, which officer came on board after his crew had been transported, and delivered up his sword.  I said to him:—­

“I am glad to see you on board the Alabama, and we will endeavour to make your time as comfortable as possible.”

The Hatteras had the following armament, viz.:—­32 pounders of 27 cwt., 4; 30 pounders, rifled, 2; 20 pounders, rifled, 1; 12 pounders, howitzer, 1:  total, 8.

The armament of the Alabama was:—­32 pounders of 52 cwt., 6; 100 pounders, rifled, 1; 24 pounders, rifled, 1; 8-inch shell gun, 1:  total, 9.

A great disparity in weight of metal in our power; but we equalized this to a considerable extent by the fair fight which we showed the enemy in approaching him so very close as to render his small guns almost as efficient as larger ones.

The tonnage of the Hatteras was eleven hundred tons; material, iron, with watertight compartments; age, eighteen months.  Her crew numbered a hundred and eight men, and eighteen officers; our own numbering a hundred and eleven men, and twenty-six officers.

The casualties on both sides were slight.  On board the enemy two were missing (firemen), supposed to have been killed in the fire-room, and three wounded, one of them severely, and two slightly.  On board ourselves, only two slightly wounded.

After the action had been over an hour or more, and whilst I was steaming off on my course, it was reported to me that a boat of the enemy, containing an acting master and five men, which had been lowered before we opened fire upon him, to board “Her Majesty’s steamer Petrel,” had escaped.  As the sea was smooth and the wind blowing gently towards the shore, distant only about nineteen miles, this boat probably reached the shore in safety in five or six hours.  The night was clear and starlit, and it would have no difficulty in shaping its course.  But for these circumstances, I should have turned back to look for it, hopeless as this task must have proved in the dark.  The weather continued moderate all night, and the wind to blow on shore.

It was ascertained that Galveston had been retaken by us, and that the Brooklyn and four of the enemy’s steam-sloops were off the port, awaiting a reinforcement of three other ships from New Orleans to cannonade the place.  So there was no “Banks’ expedition,” with its transports, heavily laden with troops, &c., to be attacked, and but for the bad look-out of our man at the masthead, we should have got instead into a hornet’s nest.

CHAPTER XXIV.