JUNE 3RD, 1864: Commander Bulloch wrote Secretary Mallory about some of the difficulties he experienced as Confederate Naval Agent abroad: "At no time since the completion of the Alabama has there been anything like money enough in hand, or within my control to pay for the ships actually under contract, and if no political complications had to delay the completion of these ships and they had been ready for delivery at the dates specified in the contracts, I should not have been able to pay for them....,
"If these were ordinary times and the agent of your department could treat openly and in person with the European governments, we could doubtless obtain very good ships from several of the Continental navies, but acting through intermediaries who care for nothing beyond their commissions, we can not get anything but the cast-off vessels of other services, which either possess some radical defect of design rendering them unfit for cruisers or are so delapidated as to be worthless."
So, in other words, a lack of money was a problem as was the fact that he had to operate through others instead of directly was another.
--Old B-Runner
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