Such was the exciting prospect our seamen and supercargoes had before them as they sailed for the Southern ports. At first, of course, the risk was not thought very great; the Confederate ports were so many and far between, and the Federal navy so weak and unorganised, that vessels proceeded very much as if there was no blockade at all. The consequence was that as early as June 1861, barely two months after the declaration of the blockade, several English vessels had been seized and condemned. Almost every week after that brought news of fresh captures; on the other hand, so many ships succeeded in getting through the widely scattered cruisers, that the business still went on in the old clumsy way. We had neither of us learnt our trade then; the Federal captains, in hopes of fat prizes, cruised without order and chased wide, leaving ports open for new-comers, while our best idea of minimising risks was to send out old unseaworthy slugs which we could well afford to lose. During the whole of the first year of the war it was in this amateurish way that things went on. A pretty regular tale of captures came in, and among the reports the mails brought home began to be whispered stories of daring attempts, and hair-breadth escapes, that set many a youngster kicking very impatiently under his desk. There came stories, too, of exasperated or ill-conditioned Federal captains who had behaved with unwarrantable bluster or tyranny to captured crews, and these began to awaken in mercantile circles a partisan leaning towards the South, which certainly did not exist at the beginning of the war. Some of us, it must be confessed, were growing oblivious of our duty as loyal subjects and of the solemn admonitions of the proclamation of neutrality, and for not a few the profit of making a successful run began to be seasoned with the pleasure of doing a good turn to the South. It is all bygone now; runners can laugh over the rough knocks they sometimes got, and blockaders at the weary dance they were led. But in those days the ill feeling was very strong, and in the midst of all the fermenting irritation dropped the grating surprise of the _Trent_ affair.