The Peterhof Affair
25 FEBRUARY 1863
THE PETERHOF AFFAIR
The Union Navy’s blockade of the Confederacy during the Civil War yielded quite a few captures. In disposing of these ships and their cargoes, there emerged a controversy over what to do with the mail pouches often found aboard. In the opinion Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, mail was part of the cargo and was subject to legal search. Secretary of State William Seward, however, espoused the equally logical argument that mail is an international institution to be held above national squabbles, and the Navy should make every effort to forward confiscated mail to the addressee, unopened. Seward trumped the issue by communicating his opinion to Lord John Russell of the British government, who assumed Seward spoke for President Lincoln. Russell read Seward’s opinion into the Parliamentary record. Now with the legitimacy of Parliament, this “ruling” became a boon to British blockade runners. Their true bills of lading could now be sheltered from discovery as sealed mail.
One of the “test cases” for this issue involved the British-flagged blockade runner Peterhof who departed Liverpool in February 1863 ostensibly for Matamoros, Mexico (until a sailor let slip the true destination of Brownsville, Texas). Secretly learning the nature of Peterhof’s freight, the American consul in London alerted Secretary Welles’ office, who had Peterhof intercepted in St. Thomas by USS VANDERBILT on this date. The runner was taken to New York, where Prize Commissioner Henry H. Elliott entertained opening the ship’s mail pouch in search of evidence. British ambassador E.M. Archibald protested, and President Lincoln soon found himself besieged by Seward and Welles, whose disdain for each other was only surpassed by their passion for their positions.
Lincoln heard both sides and labored over a decision. He recognized that contemporary British sympathies leaned dangerously toward the Confederacy, as the South was the main supplier of cotton for the burgeoning British textile industry. Yet Welles offered compelling arguments that a ruling in favor of the sanctity of the mails would weaken the blockade, demoralize Union Navy squadrons, and lengthen the war. Unable to make up his mind, Lincoln asked each Secretary to draft his respective opinion into a formal position paper for more deliberate study.
Welles attacked this tasking with his remarkable industry, forestalling work on all other issues for a week while he called in subject matter experts and drafted a 5600-word response. But behind the scenes, Seward used the time to again overtake the issue. When Welles finally delivered his tome on April 27th, Peterhof’s mail pouch was already being routed, unopened.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 28 FEB 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. III-35, IV-29, VI-49.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 273.
Niven, John. Gideon Welles: Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1973, pp. 454-58.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Confiscated blockade runners were valued in the Union Navy, the same qualities of speed and stealth that made them good runners also gave them an edge in blockade related pursuits. But the legal wranglings associated with this case delayed the transfer of Peterhof. She was not outfitted and commissioned into service with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron until February 1864. Her career was very short, however. Within the first week of her arrival for duty at New Inlet, North Carolina, she was involved in a collision with USS MONTICELLO and sank. PETERHOF’s wreck was located in 1963, and several of her guns are now displayed at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the Carteret County Museum of History, and the Fort Fisher State Historical Site.
Matamoros, Mexico, situated just south of the Texas border, and Brownsville on the opposite shore of the Rio Grande, were convenient ports of call for blockade runners. Contraband goods could be landed, allowing wagon trains to carry the goods across Texas to the Red River. From there, they were shipped via the Mississippi River and points east.
Today the U.S. Code requires that mail arriving in a US port from any vessel be delivered to the Postal Service within three hours of docking. However, such mail may be seized if “probable cause” exists that its contents violate federal law or postal regulations.
