HIS PART IN THE CIVIL WAR 171 



SO that he could be near his son whom he had placed 

 there in the Rose Hill School. 



At the time of Maury's arrival in England, there were, 

 it appears, eight officers of the Confederate Navy in 

 Europe, who were engaged in the task of securing by 

 whatever means possible the much needed ships for the 

 Confederacy. Captain Samuel Barron, who had been 

 sent over to command the ironclad rams at that time 

 being built by Lairds at Liverpool, was the flag-officer 

 and in actual command, though the duties and responsi- 

 bilities of the various officers were not very clearly de- 

 fined and often overlapped. 



Maury's first accomplishment was the purchase, in 

 March, 1863, of a new iron screw-steamer of about 560 

 tons, which had just been completed at Dumbarton on 

 the Clyde. She was fitted out as a merchant steamer 

 under the name of the Japan, and on April 1, set sail, 

 pretending to be bound for the East Indies. At about 

 the same time a small steamer, the Alar, cleared from 

 New Haven for St. Malo with Commander William 

 Lewis Maury and a staff of officers together with guns, 

 ammunition, and other supplies. The two ships met 

 off Ushant, where the war material was placed on board 

 the larger vessel. Commander Maury, a cousin to 

 M. F. Maury, then commissioned her a Confederate 

 man-of-war with the name Georgia. 



The ship at once began a cruise which lasted seven 

 months and resulted in the capture of eight or nine ves- 

 sels, amounting to a loss of $406,000. After cruising 

 over the South Atlantic and calling at Bahia, Brazil, 

 where she fell in with the Alabama, and at Capetown, 

 she made her way in safety to Cherbourg, France, where 

 she arrived during the night of October 28-29. Here 



