372 The Story of the New England Whalers 



by some of those cruisers was enough, naturally, 

 to create bitter memories; but to add to the bitter- 

 ness the cruiser captains did some things that 

 outraged the feelings of the captured ships' crews 

 in a way hard to forget. Thus when Commander 

 Raphael Semmes, while in command of the 

 cruiser Sumter, learned that the crew of the 

 Confederate privateer Savannah had been placed 

 on trial in New York for piracy, he confined eight 

 of the merchant seamen he had captured and 

 gave them "to understand that they were hos- 

 tages, and that their discharge, their close confine- 

 ment, or their execution, as the case might be, 

 depended upon the action of their own govern- 

 ment in the case of the Savannah prisoners." 

 (Memoirs of Service Afloat, p. 178.) 



As was eventually seen, the men of the Sa- 

 vannah were not pirates; they had been legiti- 

 mately serving the Confederate government. The 

 Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, on learn- 

 ing that the Savannah's men were to be tried as 

 pirates, ordered a number of United States sol- 

 diers placed in confinement as hostages to abide 

 the fate of those sailors, and in this act he was, 



