August 28th the Alabama arrived at Angra Pequeña Bay, on the west coast of Africa, more than a hundred miles north of the northern boundary of the Cape Colony, whither the Tuscaloosa and Sea Bride had preceded her. The harbor was good, but the country was a rainless, sandy, rock-bound desert, without so much as a shrub or a blade of grass; and no nation had as yet set up any claim to it.
At last Captain Semmes had found a port into which he could take a prize. The few naked and half starved Hottentots who appeared made no remonstrance against the violation of neutrality.
The Sea Bride and her cargo were sold to a Cape Town merchant for about one-third of their value, he to take the risk arising from the fact that she had never been condemned in a prize court, and the money was paid and possession given him at this secluded place. Here also was deposited the wool from the Tuscaloosa, to be picked up by another speculator, who was to ship it to Europe and credit the Confederate government with two-thirds of the proceeds. Two months later the Vanderbilt visited Angra Pequeña and captured there the British bark Saxon, having a large part of the wool on board, and sent her to a prize court in the United States.
The United States consul at Cape Town, having heard of the Alabama's little mark down sales, protested against the vending of any of the goods within the colony by the purchasers. After much delay and difficulty the cargo of the Sea Bride was peddled out in Madagascar and elsewhere, and the vessel herself turned adrift--for a consideration--with the understanding that certain persons should pick her up as a derelict.
When the Alabama returned to Simons Town, she found the Vanderbilt had been there, and had, moreover, taken in all the coal which was to be had in the place. The Vanderbilt was an enormous consumer of coal, a fact which interfered considerably with her movements in a quarter of the world where coal was so high in price and so uncertain in supply. Lieutenant Baldwin had fairly turned the tide of popular opinion in his favor by his magnanimous conduct in the case of a Dutch bark, which the Vanderbilt found in a disabled state a hundred miles from the shore, and which she towed safely into a harbor. Lieutenant Baldwin declined to accept any part of the salvage which he might have claimed, and although he was delayed some twenty-four hours in his chase of Confederate cruisers by the incident, the improved feeling toward the United States government in South Africa was of much greater value. The three months rule was so far relaxed that the Vanderbilt coaled three times in British ports within three months, instead of only once, as the rule prescribed. Permission to coal a fourth time was, however, denied.