Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Blockade Runner Lelia Founders

JANUARY 14TH, 1865:  Blockade Runner Lelia foundered off the mouth of the Mersey River, England.  Flag Officer Barron wrote Secretary Mallory from Paris: "The melancholy duty devolves  on me of reporting the death on the 14th instant, by drowning of Commander Arthur Sinclair and Gunner P.C. Cuddy, late of the Alabama."

Commander Hunter Davidson, learning of the accident while in Funchal, Madeira, early in February, commented: "What an awful thing the loss of the Lelia.  To death in battle we become reconciled, for it is not unexpected and leaves its reward; but such a death for poor Sinclair, after forty-two years' service...!"

Also, this date:  The USS Seminole captured schooner Josephine bound from Galveston to Matamoras with cargo of cotton.

--Old B-Runner

1 comment:

  1. Hello: I am researching Hunter Davidson, and I would very much like to know the source of this quote and where to find it. In particular, I found in Fold 3 a letter he wrote from Galveston, TX, in late April 1865, (and confirmed by a similar letter by Texas army officer) that he had somehow made it there and did accomplish his mission. Yet, filling in the details of dates and movements, among others, is still a blank.

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