Federal Currency with Confederate Watermark

USS ALASKA

Captain
Joined
Mar 16, 2016
Shipping paper through the 'paper blockade'...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bermuda_(1861)

"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. At a point somewhere between three and seven miles northeast of the Hole-in-the-Wall Light, a shot across her bow brought Bermuda to. The ensuing boarding party not only found discrepancies in the cargo manifests, but about a thousand tons of contraband cargo, including:

a battery of 7 fieldpieces (rifled), with carriages and everything complete, a number of heavier rifled cannon, 42,720 pounds of powder in barrels, and one-half and one-fourth barrels; 70 barrels of cartridges, over 600 cases of shells, etc…

Since the ship’s log yielded the information that she had “run the blockade before” and her captain admitted that her cargo was “intended finally to reach the rebel States,” Comdr. Henry S. Stellwagen, Mercedita’s
commanding officer, seized Bermuda and sent her to Philadelphia under Lt. Trevett Abbot and a 30-man prize crew. Part of the cargo that was seized was a substantial shipment of blank paper sheets that were intended for the printing of Confederate currency. Made from seaweed pulp in England, the paper was watermarked CSA. Transferred to Philadelphia, the paper eventually became the property of the Currency Bureau (precursor to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing). The Currency bureau used the paper for the printing of specimen notes of fractional currency and so specimen notes exist with the CSA watermark, including the notes on the Fractional currency shield. Sheets of the blank paper are known to exist. This seizure was by far the most important of the entire cargo."

The weird strange little things I learn everyday...
USS ALASKA

 
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