Civil War-dated ALS signed “John Thomas,” one page both sides, 8.25 x 10.75, October 8, 1863. Addressed from Boston, a handwritten letter to New Hampshire Congressman Daniel Marcy, regarding the recent capture of the USN ship Express by the CSS Alabama and her captain, Raphael Semmes, in part: “We rec’d the protest from Capt. Frost this morning & immediately placed it before the underwriters…It seems the ship was boarded by the ‘Alabama’ on 6 July about 1 o’clock on that day. The day was thick & three shots were fired before Capt. F could make out where they came from. At first he supposed the guns, signal of distress but the 3d convinced him they were loaded. Semmes immediately took the ship along side ordered the crew on board his ship & fired the ‘Express’ with every thing on board including all her papers & the Capt & his wife’s clothing.” In fine condition.
Semmes detailed his capture of the Express in his autobiography, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States: ‘The morning of the 6th proved cloudy and squally, and we had some showers of rain, though the barometer kept steadily up. At thirty minutes past midnight, an officer came below to inform me that there was a large sail in sight not a great way off. I sent word to the officer of the deck to chase and repaired on deck pretty soon myself. In about three hours we had approached the chase sufficiently near to heave her to with a shot, she having previously disregarded two blank cartridges. She proved to be another prize, the ship Express, of Boston from Callao for Antwerp with a cargo of guano from the Chincha Islands. This cargo probably belonged to the Peruvian Government, for the guano of the Chincha Islands is a government monopoly, but our Peruvian friends had been unfortunate in their attempts to cover it…I was sorry to burn so much property belonging in all probability to Peru, but I could make no distinction between that government and an individual. I had the right to burn the enemy's ship, and if a neutral government chose to put its property on board of her, it was its duty to document it according to the laws of war or abide the consequences of the neglect. The certificate would not have secured individual property, and I could not permit it to screen that of a government which was presumed to know the law better than an individual. As the case stood, I was bound to presume that the property, being in an enemy's bottom, was enemy's. The torch followed this decision. The Express had had a long and boisterous passage around Cape Horn and gave signs of being much weatherbeaten - some of her spars and sails were gone, and her sides were defaced with iron rust. The master had his wife on board, a gentle Englishwoman, with her servant maid, or rather humble companion, and it seemed quite hard that these two females, after having braved the dangers of Cape Horn, should be carried off to brave other dangers at the Cape of Good Hope.’
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