From March 29th to April 22d there were no events calling for special attention, save that on the sixteenth the intelligence was learned from the master of a French ship that there were no American vessels at the Chincha Islands, though in July, 1863, there were between seventy and eighty American sail there. This speaks volumes of the terror the Alabama had excited.
The night of the 22d of April was employed in giving chase to a strange sail, which was overhauled at daybreak on the following morning; and the United States flag having been responded to by a display of the same colours, the Alabama boarded and took possession of the guano-laden ship, Rockingham, which was employed as a target, and then set fire to. The cargo being claimed as the property of neutrals, Captain Semmes examined the ship's papers and entered the following in his journal:--
"Ship under United States colours and register. Is from Callao, bound to Cork for orders, and loaded with guano. This guano purports to be shipped by the Guano Consignment Company to Great Britain. One Joseph A. Danino, who signs for Danino and Moscosa, certifies that the guano belongs to the Peruvian Government; and Her Britannic Majesty's Acting Consul at Lima certifies that the said Joseph A. Danino appeared before him and 'voluntarily declared' 'that the foregoing signature is of his own handwriting, and also that the cargo above mentioned is truly and verily the property of the Peruvian Government.'
"As this is the only certificate of the neutrality of the cargo among the papers, and as nobody swears to anything in this certificate, there is no testimony at all. The ship being enemy's property, and the cargo being presumed to be enemy's property also, from being found on board the ship, it was incumbent on the neutral parties, if there are any such in the case, to have documented their property by sworn certificates; and this rule of law is so well known, that the absence of an oath would seem to be conclusive as to the fraudulent attempt to cover. Ship and cargo condemned."
This capture was followed by that of the Tycoon, on the 27th of the same month; and as no claim of neutrality of cargo was made, the ship was burned. This, as it afterwards turned out, was the last of the Alabama's prizes. Nineteen other vessels were overhauled before she reached Cherbourg, but not one of them sailed under the Stars and Stripes. When it is remembered that no less than sixty-five American ships had been taken by the gallant cruiser, it is not much to be wondered at that the Yankee flag was a _rara avis_ on the high seas.