A notable blockade runner called the _Virginia_ was bought by the Confederate Government during the war and renamed the _Cape Fear_. She was put under the command of Captain Guthrie, a Cape Fear pilot of recognized ability, who was succeeded by an English gentleman, a fine sailor, Captain Wise, who cast his lot with our people and ran the _Cape Fear_ up and down the river for several years as a Confederate transport. She was destroyed in the river when the Federals captured Fort Fisher. Captain Wise married a Miss Flora McCaleb, of Wilmington, and for years after the war conducted a lumberyard here. He was a most courteous, attractive gentleman, generally respected in the community. He died here many years ago. The "North Heath." During the third year of the War between the States, I was appointed at the age of seventeen years purser of the blockade-running steamer _North Heath_, under command of Captain Burroughs, who had successfully run the blockade twelve times in charge of the Confederate steamer _Cornubia_, later named _Lady Davis_, after the wife of the President. I believe that under God, Captain Burroughs, by his fine qualities as a cool and capable seaman, saved this ship from foundering at sea when we ran into a hurricane shortly after our departure from St. George, Bermuda, bound for Wilmington. For two days and nights we were in imminent danger of our lives--tossed upon a raging sea, every man of our crew of 48 except those at the wheel was lashed to the vessel, while we bailed with buckets and the use of hand pumps the flooded fireroom of our sinking vessel. For an entire night she wallowed like a log in a trough of mountainous waves, which broke over us in ever-increasing fury. I can never forget this frightful scene. It seems photographed upon my memory in all its fearsome details. The water had risen in our hold until every one of our fourteen furnaces was extinguished. There was no steam to run our donkey boilers and steam-power pumps. Lashed to one another, in the blackness of darkness, relieved only by the intermittent flashes of lightning which illuminated the giant waves towering around us and threatening to overwhelm and sink the laboring, quivering fabric, we held on in despair until morning, when we began to gain on the leaks until our steam pumps could be used in relieving the boiler room, and our brave captain got the ship under control. Then we succeeded in putting her about and headed back to Bermuda.