Bermuda—an iron-hulled screw steamer—was built in 1861 at Stockton-on-Tees, England, by Pearse and Lockwood to take advantage of the extraordinary profits which could be made by running cargoes of war-making materiel through the Union blockade to the munitions-hungry Confederacy.
Originally owned by Edwin Haigh, a Liverpool cotton broker, the ship was secretly sold—about the time of her completion—to Messrs. A. S. Henckle and George Alfred Trenholme of Charleston, South Carolina.
While her new owner, Charles K. Prioleau, hoped to realize a profit from operating the steamer, he evinced even more interest in proving the Federal blockade of the South ineffective and therefore non-binding in international law.
By proving the Union Navy's efforts to close Southern ports only a "paper blockade," they would prompt other investors to follow their example and thus assure the South a steady flow of supplies to sustain its struggle for independence.
[1] Soon after she was launched, probably in late July or early August 1861, Bermuda—Eugene L. Tessier, master—dropped down the Tees River to West Hartlepool where she loaded the first cargo purchased in England by agents of the Confederate War Department.
She departed West Hartlepool on August 18, proceeded south along England's North Sea coast, transited the Strait of Dover, and steamed the length of the English Channel to Falmouth, Cornwall, where she arrived on the morning of the 22d.
She topped off her coal bunkers there and resumed her westward voyage, leaving above her wake a cloud of false rumors intended to cloak her destination and the true nature of her mission.
While these cover stories did not mislead Federal agents in the British Isles, they did succeed in preventing Bermuda's being held in port for violating the United Kingdom's Foreign Enlistment Act.
On the morning of the 27th, however, as Bermuda approached Great Abaco Island, the Union screw steamer Mercedita, cruising off the Providence Channel as part of the East Division, Gulf Blockading Squadron, fell in with her and gave chase.
Commissioned on May 13, 1863, Acting Master J. W. Smith in command, Bermuda headed down the Delaware River later that day with a cargo of supplies for the two blockading squadrons operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
Besides issuing stores, she usually also carried passengers—officers and men going to and from blockade duty, sick sailors who were returning north to recuperate, and prisoners who had been captured afloat or ashore.
During her first voyage, after filling the needs of Gem of the Sea, she embarked three prisoners from that bark and proceeded on to Key West, Florida, where she arrived on 23 May and discharged ordnance and supplies.
Besides carrying out her prosaic but vital logistical mission for the Union Navy, Bermuda kept a sharp lookout for any vessel that might be attempting to slip into or to escape from an inlet along the Confederate coast.
The Union supply ship overtook and boarded the stranger at 3:20 p.m. and learned that she was the British schooner Artist of Nassau, Bahamas, that had purportedly quit Havana, Cuba, for Matamoras.
Some four hours later, she overhauled the chase; "...found her to be the British schooner Carmita, from Velasco, Texas..." bound for Balize, Honduras, with a cargo of cotton; and sent her to Key West, Florida, under a prize crew.
Duke—already notorious because of earlier captures of Union vessels—fled toward land in Norman with 10 members of the lugger's crew and, after running that schooner aground and setting her afire, escaped ashore.
On Bermuda's seventh cruise to the gulf, she encountered a sloop off the Atlantic coast of Florida and, after a brief pursuit, brought the stranger to with a shot across her bow.
Two days later, Bermuda retrieved a large quantity of floating cotton bales undoubtedly jettisoned by some blockade runner attempting to escape a pursuer.
Under the names General Meade and Bahamas, she saw merchant service until February 10, 1882, when she foundered in a storm while en route from Puerto Rico to New York City.