Lest the reader think the language used here regarding the foreign blockade-runners is too strong, a story told by one of them, Thomas E. Taylor (see p. 110, “Running the Blockade”), shall be given. Taylor was a leader in the business. He ran the first steel ship (the _Banshee_) built especially for the purpose. Among other vessels under his control was the _Will-o’-the-Wisp_. She was a wretched ship, and here is what he says: “I found her a constant source of delay and expenditure and I decided to sell her. After having her cobbled up with plenty of putty and paint, I was fortunate enough to open negotiations with some Jews with a view to her purchase. Having settled all preliminaries, we arranged for a trial trip, and after a very sumptuous lunch I proceeded to run her over a measured mile for the benefit of the would-be purchasers. I need scarcely mention that we subjected her machinery to the utmost strain, bottling up steam to a pressure of which our present Board of Trade, with its motherly care for our lives, would express strong disapproval. The log line was whisked merrily over the stern of the _Will-o’-the-Wisp_, with the satisfactory result that she logged 17½ knots. The Jews were delighted, so was I; and the bargain was clinched.” As to the legal status of a blockade-runner, Taylor says: “The blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any means recognized in civilized warfare to drive off, capture or destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate.” In the same line is what Wilson’s “Iron Clads in Action” says regarding the fact that the crews of captured blockade-runners “at least once or twice rose up on the prize crew and recaptured the ship. It was a big risk--piracy upon the high seas--with the penalty of death if blood was shed.”