Maury was instructed by the Secretary of the Navy, on June 8, 1863, to purchase another ship. This order, however, did not reach him until two months afterwards, and he was not able to carry it out until the month of November, when he secured a condemned dispatch boat belonging to the Royal Navy. This was the _Victor_, a screw-steamer of about 500 tons which had been offered for sale at Sheerness. For fear of being stopped, Maury hurried her to sea on the wintry night of November 24, with workmen still on board and with only a few of her intended crew. Her officers joined her in the Channel, where she was commissioned the _Rappahannock_. Two days later she entered the harbor of Calais under the guise of a Confederate ship in distress. Here the French threw such restrictions about her as to prevent her from even making an attempt to leave port. Some endeavors were made to sell the vessel, but the war came to an end before this could be accomplished and the ship was eventually turned over to the United States. Her commanding officer had considered her a poor ship for commerce destroying, because her machinery took up too much space and her magazine was so large as to leave but little room for crew and provisions. The ship was often referred to as “The Confederate White Elephant”, but she did serve the very useful purpose of keeping two United States war vessels constantly off Calais to prevent her from going to sea. Maury and the other Confederate agents had great obstacles to meet in securing ships, and probably did as well as possible under the circumstances. Federal agents were constantly on the watch to see that French and British neutrality was strictly observed, and besides Maury and his associates were greatly handicapped by the lack of money for the purchase of vessels and the insufficiency of both officers and their crews. “If I had had money and officers”, wrote Maury, “I could since I have been here have fitted out half a dozen just as good to prey upon the Yankee commerce as the _Alabama_”.