Several vessels were offered in response to Crawford’s advertisements, and on the 16th of March, when the packing of the arms was well advanced, Crawford, Agnew, and his chief engineer went to Norway to inspect these steamers.  Eventually they selected the s.s. Fanny, which had just returned to Bergen with a cargo of coal from Newcastle.  She was only an eight-knot vessel, but her skipper, a Norwegian, gave a favourable report of her sea-going qualities and coal consumption, and Agnew and his engineer were satisfied by their inspection of her.  The deal was quickly completed, and the Captain and his Norwegian crew willingly consented to remain in charge of the Fanny; and, in order to enable her to sail under the Norwegian flag, as a precaution against possible confiscation in British waters, it was arranged that the Captain should be the nominal purchaser, giving Crawford a mortgage for her full value.

Then, leaving Agnew to get sufficient stores on board the Fanny for a three-months’ cruise, Crawford returned to Hamburg on the 20th, and thence to Belfast to report progress.  Agnew’s orders were to bring the Fanny in three weeks’ time to a rendezvous marked on the chart between the Danish islands of Langeland and Fuenen, where he was to pick up the cargo of arms, which Crawford would bring in lighters from Hamburg through the Kiel Canal.

While Crawford was in Belfast arrangements were made to enable him to keep in communication with Spender, so that in case of necessity he could be warned not to approach the Irish coast, but to cruise in the Baltic till a more favourable opportunity.  He was to let Spender know later where he could be reached with final instructions as to landing the arms; the rendezvous so agreed upon subsequently was Lough Laxford, a wild and inaccessible spot on the west coast of Sutherlandshire.  Crawford was warned by B.S. that he was far from confident of a successful end to their labours at Hamburg.  He had never before shipped anything like so large a number of firearms; and the long process of packing, and Crawford’s own mysterious coming and going, would be certain to excite suspicion, which would reach the secret agents of the British Government, and lead either to a protest addressed to the German authorities, followed by a prohibition on shipping the arms, or to confiscation by the British authorities when the cargo entered British territorial waters.

These fears must have been present to the mind of B.S. when he met Crawford at the station in Hamburg on the 27th on his return from Belfast, for the precautions taken to avoid being followed gave their movements the character of an adventure by one of Stanley Weyman’s heroes of romance.  Whether any suspicion had in fact been aroused remains unknown.  Anyhow, the barges were ready laden, with a tug waiting till the tide should serve about midnight for making a start down the Elbe, and through the canal to Kiel.