On arrival, Maury conferred with Captain James T. Bulloch, C. S. Navy, who had an office with Fraser, Trenholm, and Company, the financial agents of the Confederate government, at No. 10 Rumford Place. After a short stay in Liverpool, he went on to London to a house in Sackville Street which had already been engaged for him, where, according to Morgan, “All day long there would be in front of the house a string of carriages with coronets on their doors, while their owners were paying their respects to the great ‘Lieutenant Maury’”. Early in 1863, Maury established himself at Bowdon, a village about nine miles from Manchester, so that he could be near his son whom he had placed there in the Rose Hill School. [Illustration: _From James Morris Morgan’s “Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.”_ C. S. CRUISER “GEORGIA” Fitted out for the Confederate States by Maury in England] At the time of Maury’s arrival in England, there were, it appears, eight officers of the Confederate Navy in Europe, who were engaged in the task of securing by whatever means possible the much needed ships for the Confederacy. Captain Samuel Barron, who had been sent over to command the ironclad rams at that time being built by Lairds at Liverpool, was the flag-officer and in actual command, though the duties and responsibilities of the various officers were not very clearly defined and often overlapped. Maury’s first accomplishment was the purchase, in March, 1863, of a new iron screw-steamer of about 560 tons, which had just been completed at Dumbarton on the Clyde. She was fitted out as a merchant steamer under the name of the _Japan_, and on April 1, set sail, pretending to be bound for the East Indies. At about the same time a small steamer, the _Alar_, cleared from New Haven for St. Malo with Commander William Lewis Maury and a staff of officers together with guns, ammunition, and other supplies. The two ships met off Ushant, where the war material was placed on board the larger vessel. Commander Maury, a cousin to M. F. Maury, then commissioned her a Confederate man-of-war with the name _Georgia_.