The anchor was not fairly at the cathead when a sail was reported seaward, which on capture proved to be the barque Joseph Maxwell, of Philadelphia.  The capture having taken place at about seven miles from the port to which she was bound, and half of the cargo being the property of a neutral owner, a boat was despatched with her master and the paymaster of the Sumter to endeavour to effect negotiation.  The proposition was, that the owner of the neutral half of the cargo should purchase at a small price the remaining half and the vessel herself, which should then be delivered to him intact without delay.  This little arrangement, however, was somewhat summarily arrested by the action of the Governor, who, much to Captain Semmes’ astonishment, sent off orders that the prize should at once be brought into port, there to remain in his Excellency’s custody, until a Venezuelan court should have decided whether the capture had or had not been effected within the marine league from the coast prescribed by international law!

This somewhat extraordinary demand did not receive the respect or obedience on which its promulgator had doubtless relied.  Beating to quarters, and with his men standing to their guns in readiness for instant action, the Sumter stood out once more towards her prize; sent the master and his family ashore in one of his own boats, put a prize crew on board the Maxwell, and despatched her to a port at the south side of Cuba.  It is believed that these unfriendly demonstrations on the part of the Governor of Puerto Caballo were owing to a fear that the Sumter was in truth employed upon some such enterprise as that on which the agent of Don Castro at Curacao had vainly endeavoured to engage her, and was endeavouring to effect a landing for revolutionary troops.

The Sumter now again stood away upon her course towards the eastward, and at five in the evening came across an hermaphrodite brig, from whose peak floated the hated but welcome stars and stripes.  This time, however, it was able to wave in safe defiance before the eyes of the dreaded foe, for the sagacious master had kept carefully “within jumping distance” of the shore, and the sacred “marine league of neutrality” protected the vessel from the fate that had befallen so many of her countrymen.

The afternoon of the 28th July found the Sumter off the island of Tortuga, and at eleven that evening the ship was hove to in thirty-two fathoms of water off the eastern end of Margaritta.  Two more days’ run along the Venezuelan coast, at times in so dense a fog that it was necessary to run within a mile of the shore in order to “hold on” to the land, and the Gulf of Bahia was reached.  Following close on the track of a vessel just arrived from Madeira, and acquainted with the harbour, the Sumter held on her course through the Huero or Umbrella Passage, and shortly after noon anchored off the town of Port of Spain, receiving as she did so a salute from the ensign of an English brig passing out of the harbour.