Captain Semmes.
Since the days of John Paul Jones, no of a single ship has achieved such a reputation; none, even including Jones accomplished such results as Captain Raphael Semmes. Of all the rebels to whom this war has given rise, his hand has struck the most galling blows, and reached the most sensitive parts of the Yankee organization. Ever since the last war with England, that modest nation has arrogated to itself the dominion of the deep, and looked down with profound contempt upon pretensions to naval skill and enterprise by anybody outside of New England. A yet stronger passion was wounded by the career of Captain Semmes. Far more powerful even than Jonathan's love of glory is her fondness for pelf. Semmes, with a ruthless hand, stripped the ass of the lion's skin, and cleaned out the crib that held his feed.--It seems almost incredible that a commercial marine, which claimed to be second to no other in the world, was literally swept from the seas by one man in a single ship. Such a prodigy will engage the wonder and admiration of posterity. It will read in the pages of history like the fatted achievements of the demigods of antiquity. But it is the literal truth; and the man who performed this next to miraculous wonder, and whose name will hereafter loom up among sea-kings like Himmaleh among the mountains, is now in our city, as modest as he is heroic, as retiring among friends as he is audacious and unrelenting to his adversaries."This mode of warfare is contrary to our system and utterly insufferable," said an old German general whom Napoleon was pressing to the wall like an animated thunderbolt. The lightning-like rapidity of Semmes upon the seas rivalled that of Napoleon upon the land. Of course his "mode of warfare was contrary to the (Yankee) system." Did they over see the instructions of the Revolutionary Congress to "John Paul Jones, Esq.," (see page thirty-eight of Sherburne's Life of Paul Jones,) to "take, sink, burn or destroy all such of the enemy's ships, vessels, goods and effects as you may be able"? Perhaps the offence of Captain Semmes consists in his violation of the Yankee patent? Certain it is, Jones had no such field of operations as Semmes. No sea was safe from him. From the coast of the United States to the Cape of Good Hope there was not a wave that American commerce was secure on. The dreadful pirate seemed ubiquitous. The Flying Dutchman never caused more apprehension among superstitious marines. He laughed to scorn efforts of the whole United States navy to overtake him, though he made his path across the ocean as light as noonday by the blaze of burning ships. He might have escaped, finally, if he had not chosen to fight a vessel vastly the superior of his swift, but fragile, bark; and then he buried her beneath the waves, and she went down to her grand mausoleum unprofaned by a conqueror's footstep, with her mission accomplished, and the whole commercial marine of the United States vanished like the fog of the morning.
We hope the time is not far distant when Captain Semmes will be once more on the waters, in a ship worthy to bear the pennant of the most daring, enterprising and successful naval captain of modern times.
