The next cruiser to be considered was named the _Florida_. She was built at Liverpool under the name of _Oreto_. The American officials learned, while she was building, that she was of the same model and scantling as the best British gunboats of that day. She had ports for four guns. On February 18, 1862, complaint was made to the British government by the American representative charging that she was building for use as a Confederate cruiser, whereat “orders were given that she be vigilantly watched.” On March 3d she was registered in the name of a member of a Sicilian firm, then in Liverpool, and cleared for “Palermo, the Mediterranean and Jamaica” in ballast. She sailed on March 22d with a crew of fifty men, but she went directly to Nassau, in the Bahamas. When there she appeared as a merchant ship consigned by Fraser, Trenholm & Co., of Liverpool, notorious as Confederate agents, to their Nassau house. Here, on complaint of the United States consul, she was libelled, and there was a farce of a trial in the Nassau court. Of course she was released. It was proved that she had taken on munitions of war, but these had been sent ashore again, and to the mind of the court she was a genuine British merchantman. Meantime her crew asked the British authorities to discharge them, alleging as a reason for the request that they had been deceived when they shipped in her. She had been represented as a merchantman, they said, but it was plain she was a man-o’-war, and they did not want to fight. On this plea they were at once discharged. On August 2d she cleared for Havana, shipped twenty-two men of the blockade-running class, went to a desolate island called Green Key, and met a vessel that had brought out a first-class English armament of two seven-inch rifles and six six-inch guns. Her new commander was John Newland Maffitt, formerly of the American navy, and one who, because of his good qualities, did not lose his friends there when he forsook the flag. Maffitt was so pressed for men that he worked as a common sailor himself to transfer the arms. In fact, every man on board worked so hard that when one man came down with yellow fever the others took it. The ship reached Cardenas, in spite of losses from the fever. While still ill with the fever, Maffitt was compelled by the authorities to go to Havana. Finding he should never get a crew there, he decided on the desperate expedient of running over to Mobile and braving the blockade, although he had barely enough men to man the stoke-hole. The blockaders were sighted on September 4, 1862, and Maffitt, with just one man on deck to steer, hoisted the British flag, and headed directly for the blockaders.