A boatload of officers from the Confederate commerce raider Georgia had landed through the surf on the coast of Morocco about 30 miles south of Mogador, and were exercising on the sandy beach after many months of cruising during the winter of 1863-64. None of them were armed.

Suddenly, they were surrounded by a crowd of Moors armed with long guns, and all yelling at the top of their voices, while the bushes that fringed the beach continued to erupt more natives. Each officer quickly became the center of a knot of Moors and there began one of the most humiliating experiences ever endured by naval officers. They were turned to face the sea and then each was kicked every step of a slow march that did not end until they were in the water and able to embark in their waiting cutter, which had hastily come in to the edge of the breakers.

With the party in the boat, the crew bent to the oars without orders, and save for the rhythm of the stroke, the silence was oppressive. On board the Georgia, Captain Maury was apprised of the incident in detail and he flew into a towering rage, and ordered his crew to quarters.

A ranging shot was fired from one of the ship’s little 10-pound Whitworth guns, and this was followed by a steady bombardment, with the heavy, rifled pivot guns chiming in, as the Georgia's battery searched the brush and scrub timber in which the natives were supposed to be hiding. It was obviously an act of hostility against Morocco and constituted the Confederacy’s only “foreign war.” It seems likely that the bombardment caused little, if any, loss of life, for the first shot sent the Moors rushing up the barren hill sides to disappear into caves.

The ship remained at anchor watching for the natives to reappear until late afternoon, when a falling barometer and a rising sea made the captain anxious concerning his position off a lee shore. Deciding to seek sea room, he weighed anchor and started his engines, when a crash below told of a machinery breakdown.

The anchor was dropped immediately but the increasing velocity of the wind made the Georgia drag toward the shore. The second anchor only served to slow her progress toward the breakers as the engineers worked frantically to repair her engines. Those on deck, powerless to help their ship, could only stand and watch the beach where the natives had once more assembled to shout Moorish epithets at the white strangers in danger of falling into their hands.

The cries of the Moors could be plainly heard before a tremor shook the raider, indicating that the engines had started again. A cheer swept the ship to be stilled in a moment by another crash from the engine-room. The rocks were near and the end of the raider was but a matter of minutes, when the engines started again and this time settled to their task.

The anchors were raised and the Georgia slowly clawed off the hostile shore. Once clear of the land, made dim by the gathering night, Maury set a course for Bordeaux which the ship reached after a stormy passage. Remaining in that port for several weeks; the Georgia finally slipped to sea again and reached Liverpool, where the crew was paid off and the ship was sold out of the Confederate naval service to a British merchant who placed her on the mail run from Liverpool to Lisbon, and the Cape Verde Islands.

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“Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion”

CONFEDERATE STATES STEAMERGEORGIA

The ship was captured on her first voyage for her new owner by the U.S.S. Niagara which overhauled her off the mouth of the Tagus. The Georgia was condemned as a prize and sold into the United States merchant service.

The “foreign war” incident provides the most noteworthy high light of the Georgia's rather brief career as a Confederate commerce destroying cruiser, during which she captured and sent to the bottom a number of merchant vessels but did not exact a toll that came anywhere near the totals attained by the Alabama or Florida.

The ship was bought from the British merchant service and received a small naval crew while rolling within sight of Ushant Island light off the coast of France. Guns were hoisted from her hold and mounted; then the Confederate flag was raised and the ship was commissioned.

The shortage in the ranks of her complement was partially relieved in a few days after the big bark Dictator of New York was taken and burned off the Cape Verde Islands. Almost all the Dictator's crew enlisted on board the raider, which had set a course for the coast of South America. The bark George Griswold was captured and destroyed off Rio de Janeiro and then, with the hunting poor, the Georgia worked well out into the South Atlantic where several captures were made in short order.

When one of these prizes, the brig Good Hope, was taken, it was found that her captain had died at sea and the crew was preserving his body in brine. Captain Maury of the Georgia ordered the remains brought on board his ship and then committed them to the deep after reading the burial service. During these rites the Good Hope, lying only a few hundred yards away, was a mass of flame from truck to keelson and the fire attracted the American bark Seaver, whose captain, ignorant of a state of war, sought to give assistance. Under the circumstances, Captain Maury loaded his prisoners into the Seaver and released her.

Continuing her cruise in the direction of the African coast, the Georgia eluded the U.S.S. Niagara in the darkness of a stormy night and, while seeking the tea fleet coming from the Far East, miraculously escaped challenge by the U.S.S. Vanderbilt, which was hurrying into Table Bay and had the Confederate under her guns, but evidently took her for an English tea carrier. Shortly after the Vanderbilt had passed over the horizon, the Georgia captured and scuttled the ship John Watt.

Morning of the next day found the raider in the midst of the tea fleet and she turned north with it, going from ship to ship to ask their nationality, hoping to bag a Yankee. The fleet gradually drew ahead, for the sea growth on the Georgia's hull had so slowed her that she could only jog along at a 5- or 6-knot speed. Alone again, the raider put into Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands, where she coaled and provisioned. Three days later she was on the long sea road again, heading toward the English Channel and a dry dock for much needed repairs.

Well clear of the Islands, she overhauled the ship Bold Hunter, coal laden, during a calm. Maury took the vessel and tried to replenish his dwindling coal supply, but wind and sea suddenly began to rise and the prize crew finally had to leave the ship, firing her before they went overside. Then transpired a fast-moving series of events that almost meant the end of the Confederate raider.

The watch officer of the Georgia had allowed his ship to drift rather near the burning prize to shorten the distance the boat’s crew had to row in the heavy sea. The flaming Bold Hunter, with sails set and no one on board, began bearing down on the Georgia. Seeing a collision imminent, the watch officer pulled the engine-room bell for full speed ahead. As the engine started there was a crash below and those on deck knew the usual mishap had occurred—the wooden cogs on the propeller shaft had broken. In an instant the Bold Hunter was upon the Georgia.

She rose on a sea and came down on the latter’s port rail, smashing boats and davits. Then, recoiling, she charged again, crushing the raider’s taffrail and doing some damage to the side. It looked as though the Georgia’s cruise was about ended, and had not the Bold Hunter suddenly sheered off and passed to leeward, the only “foreign war” in which the Confederacy ever engaged would never have been fought.

While the engineers were repairing the shaft, the Georgia’s crew watched the burning ship as she rolled until she finally dived into the depths. Never had a ship, without a crew, made a more desperate and damaging attack upon a pitiless tormentor. When the repairs were completed, the raider resumed her slow progress toward the English Channel.

The next day brought another exciting encounter, this time with a Frenchman— the bark La Patrie of Marseilles. She was overhauled while almost becalmed, the only condition under which the befouled Georgia could catch anything. When ordered to heave to, the Gaul refused, bellowing across the water that he was a “Frenchman and would not stop for a pirate.”

Captain Maury, unruffled by the insolence, ordered a boat away, and told the boarding officer to inspect the Frenchman’s papers but to use no force. When the boat went alongside La Patrie’s gangway, the young officer was confronted by the captain flourishing an old sword, while his crew lined the rail armed with handspikes, knives, and a couple of old muskets.

Forbidden to come aboard, the Confederates returned to their ship to report the situation. The raider’s first lieutenant got into the boat, the crew was armed, and once more the trip across to the Frenchman began. But this second attempt was also rebuffed—to Captain Maury’s annoyance. He had wanted to avoid the use of force since he was bound for the French port of Cherbourg.

However, this continued defiance could not be countenanced further. The cruiser beat to quarters and fired a blank cartridge with no apparent result. The Georgia then spoke with a solid shot that struck the water almost under the Frenchman’s bow, throwing a sheet of spray over his forecastle. Never were sails thrown aback quicker, and the boarding party, making a third attempt, reached La Patrie’s deck without difficulty.

Her captain met the demand to see his papers with the dramatic declaration that force would have to be used. He asked that this show of force be the laying of a finger on his coat sleeve and showed how he wanted it done. The grinning lieutenant complied and the Frenchman ushered the naval officer into the cabin in the courtliest manner. The papers being in order, the captain opened a bottle of champagne to “celebrate” the occasion.

This incident became a subsequent diplomatic issue. Fortunately for the Confederates, they found a small French brig in distress a few days after La Patrie had been stopped. The brig was almost on her beam ends, out of provisions and fresh water. The raider brought the little ship to an even keel and supplied her needs. This rescue counted heavily in nullifying mild French indignation over La Partie affair.

Soon after these adventures, the Georgia took advantage of a dark night to enter the port of Cherbourg for a stay that was to stretch over many weeks. The ship was hauled into a French government dock and then swung at anchor in the harbor day after day waiting for the Confederate raider Rappahannock which was lying at Calais. The latter was a condemned English gunboat that had been bought at auction by a Confederate agent and taken to sea by subterfuge to be fitted out for commerce raiding.

The Rappahannock was to receive the Georgia’s battery, for an inspection in the dockyard had revealed certain structural and machinery weaknesses that made the latter’s further service as a naval vessel inadvisable. The Rappahannock could not keep the rendezvous, however. She lay embedded in the mud of a little-used Calais berth with a French gendarme guarding each of the bollards to which her mooring lines were attached.

Finally, with the U.S.S. Kearsarge waiting outside and the French government growing restive over the Georgia’s long stay in a neutral port, especially since the Confederacy had begun to appear as a losing cause, the raider used another dark night to slip into the Channel and out into the Atlantic.

Not a ship was challenged in the ensuing days as the Georgia raced toward the Moroccan coast in search of a new haven where she might wait in the forlorn hope that the Rappahannock would yet go to sea and effect a meeting.

Instead of this meeting, the Georgia met the incident that developed into cannon fire on the Moroccan coast. Afterward, driven to sea by the gale, the worn raider eventually made the haven of Liverpool where she became a merchantman again on May 10, 1864. The gallant old ship, converted into a steam brig after her capture by the Niagara, carried many a cotton cargo to England until she was finally dashed to pieces on the rocky coast of Newfoundland in the spring of 1868.

The proper defense of a coast line against attack from the sea consists in having in the sea area from which the coast can be approached a fleet which commands that area. —Wilkinson, War and Policy.