Greetings from the opposition!
I happen to be one of the Angel Island cannoneers who has crossed paths with the "Royaliste" on a few occasions. I thought you might appreciate a little background on piracy (whoops... "pyracy"... bad enough I misspelt "buccaneer" in my name!) in California during the Civil War.
The draw, of course, was gold. Gold was still coming from the California mines in the aftermath of the Gold Rush of 1849, and during the 1860's this was supplemented by the Comstock Lode in Nevada. As the Trans-Continental railroad would not be completed until 1869 the only good way to get gold to the banking centers on the East Coast was by ship... and you know who that attracts!
Fortunately for us Lincolnites, the Confederate-inspired attacks on the gold steamers and the port of San Francisco missed-fire. There was an attempt by a Confederate officer named Hogg to start a mutiny aboard a steamer bound from Central America and San Francisco, but he was captured before he could carry out his nefarious plot, and a revenue cutter off the Oregon Coast was reported to have been flying a rebel flag, which may have well been the skull and crossbones in the eyes of vigilant Union authorities. Besides these rumblings, two far more serious events occured, however.
In 1863 a chap named Asbury Harpending received permission from the Confederate government in Richmond, VA to purchase and outfit a ship in California with his own funds and use it as a privateer against Union shipping. Harpending did not let his almost total lack of military or naval experience dissuade him, and purchased in San Francsico the small schooner J.M. Chapman a pair of 12 pdr. cannon, small arms and a crew of 20 desperate men from the famed Barbary Coast. As San Francisco was a Union-controled port (indeed, California stayed with the North throughout the war), Harpending had to act in secret. With admirable nerve he had the rifles and cannon he purchased packed in crates marked "mining machinery," and on the night of March 14th he boarded his crew with the intention of sailing out under Union colors at dawn. His goal was a port on the coast of neutral Mexico, where the Confederate flag would be raised, and then he and his crew would begin terrorizing the gold steamers running down the coast.
Only problem was that neither Harpending or his hands could navigate the ship. Against his better wishes, Harpending had hired a man named Law to serve as the Chapman's pilot. Whether Law was a Union spy, coward, or his tongue got too loose in a local pub is not exactly known... what is known is that word of the raid found its way to the local Union officials, and they arranged for a boatload of Marines from the sloop U.S.S. Cyane and a tugboat full of San Francisco police to be waiting for the Chapman as soon as she cast off from her pier.
Harpending and his, err, confederates spent some time cooling off in Alcatraz while the government tried to decide if a case of piracy could be brought against them.
The second would-be Confederate 'pirate' attack on San Francisco emerged in the summer of 1865 when the cruiser C.S.S. Shenandoah was off the west coast. Although a regular Confederate navy vessel, the Shenandoah's captain, Lt. James I. Waddell, was essentially operating on his own authority at the time as the Confederacy had collapsed shortly after Lee's surrender in April of 1865. After decimating the U.S. civilian whaling fleet off Alaska in early 1865, Waddell turned the [/i]Shenandoah south with the intent of holding San Francisco for ransom!
His plan was to run past the fortresses at Fort Point and Alcatraz at night, ram the U.S. Navy's new ironclad on the Bay, the U.S.S. Camanche, capture her by boarding and then turn the guns from both ships on the city, which he would shell until the officials and business leaders there were ready to ransom the city in gold.
Needless to say, this did not occur. Waddell captured a Yankee ship with old newspapers on it remarking on how the war was drawing to a close, and he did not want to risk his crew's lives needlessly, so he sailed south until he met a British ship off of Mexico whose skipper confirmed that the war was truly at an end, but did Waddell surrender then?
No! He feared (quite rightly) that since he had sunk a number of Northern ships since hostilities had ended that if captured he would be tried and probably hung as a pirate (even though he was ignorant of the conflict's termination). Even though his ship was now homeless, he told his crew to buck up as they were to make for the nearest English port... which meant sailing all the way around Cape Horn and up the Atlantic to Liverpool (which, incidently, is where the Shenandoah had been purchased by the Confederacy over a year before). The Shenandoah was the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe, and was the last Confederate military unit to officially lower its flag, on November 6, 1865.
So, I invite all pyrates to try and take our old post on Angel Island. Many before you have tried to get a foothold on the Bay and none have succeeded (seceded???) yet!!!
