During the month of January, 1864, while my ship was in St. George, Bermuda, loading for Wilmington, I met frequently an attractive young Virginian named Selden, of the Confederate Signal Service, who had been detailed as signal officer on the fine new steamer _Emily of London_; and I became most favorably impressed with this courteous Christian gentleman and with the superior qualities of his beautiful vessel. All of her appointments were first-class, and her equipment was superior to that of any other blockade runner of the fleet. As she lies now in sight of my cottage on Wrightsville Beach, visible at every turn of the tide, I often wonder what became of Selden, for I never learned his fate after the stranding and loss of his fine ship a mile or so above the wreck of the _Fannie and Jennie_, on the same night, February 9, 1864. The only particulars of the stranding of the _Emily_ are embodied in the official report of her discovery on the beach by Captain Crosby, of the Federal cruiser _Florida_, who found her ashore between Masonboro Inlet and Wrightsville Beach after her captain and crew had abandoned her. She was then set on fire by bombshells from the cruiser _Florida_, a loud explosion on board of the wrecked vessel indicating that her cargo was probably partly composed of explosives for the Confederacy. Captain Crosby adds that she was a new and very handsome steamer, expensively fitted out. It is presumed that the _Emily's_ captain and crew, numbering about fifty men, succeeded in reaching the protection of the Confederates. The "Ella." An ex-Confederate officer describing Wilmington during the blockade, among many interesting things, said the following: "Owing to the configuration of the coast it was almost impossible to effect a close blockade. The Cape Fear had two mouths, Old Inlet, at the entrance of which Fort Caswell stands, and New Inlet, nine miles up the river, where Fort Fisher guarded the entrance. From the station off Old Inlet, where there were usually from five to six blockaders, around to the station off New Inlet, a vessel would have to make an arc of some fifty miles, owing to the Frying Pan Shoals intervening, while from Caswell across to Fisher was only nine miles. The plan of the blockade runners coming in was to strike the coast thirty or forty miles above or below the inlets, and then run along (of course at night) until they got under the protection of the forts. Sometimes they got in or out by boldly running through the blockading fleet, but that was hazardous; for, if discovered, the ocean was alive with rockets and lights, and it was no pleasant thing to have shells and balls whistling over you and around you. The chances were then that if you were not caught you had, in spite of your speed, to throw a good many bales of cotton overboard.