A Veteran War Correspondent.

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 18, 13 December 1904, Page 3

A Veteran War Correspondent.

Bennet Burleigh Forty Years Ago. The 44 Daily Telegraph’s ” veteran war correspondent, who is representing that journal at the scene of hostilities in the Far East, has had an eventful career. One wonders (says “M.A.P.”)if his mind ever reverts to the stirring days of his youth and his first experiences in war. Thrilling experiences they were, too, dare-devil in their conception, and dangerous in their possible result, as events proved. There landed in New York from Glasgow in 1862 a young Scotch lad, who then went by the name of Bennet G. Burley, “a stout, round-shouldered, deep, full-chested man of two-and-twenty, with brow hair, blue eyes, quick with intelligence, and a fair, beardless face ” —thus an old record pictures him. He at onco proceeded to the South (the Civil War was in progress) with drawings in his pocket of a patent submarine battery, the invention of his father. But the innocent piece of paper landed him in the Richmond Bastille— Castle Thunder—where he was confined under suspicion for some weeks. After his release he turned his attention .to a torpedo intention that required to be screwed to the hull of the attacked craft and then to be ignited with a fuse. One such attempt was actually made, but the fuse refused to ignite; and the infernal machine, as it was thought to be, was afterwards discovered in New York Harbour, attached innocuously to the war vessel.

Burley’s next adventure was to join a small privateering party of ten under a fellow daring spirit, John Yates Beall. A series of filibustering expeditions were made on the Potomac and Chesapeake Rivers, in which Burley achieved his evident purpose of leading an exciting life. In one of these escapades he was wounded, captured, and imprisoned in a Delaware gaol near Philadelphia. From there he escaped, with some of his fellow-prisoners, through a drain or sewer, involving a highly dangerous swim of three miles or more, in the rain and across a tidal river. In mid-stream Burley and a friend were taken on board a vessel bound for Philadelphia, having made its master believe they had been upset from a fishing smack. Two of their fellow-prisoners were drowned in the attempt to escape, and two were re-captured. The scene changes to the city of Detroit, and to a Sunday evening of September 18, 1864, when Burley boarded a steamer —the Philo-Parsons. Twenty fel-low-passengers were picked up at handy Canadian ports, having with them an old trunk securely tied with rope. Beall was also on board, disguised for the purpose. At 4 p.m. tho next day the boat had just left Kelly’s Island, in Lake Erie, when a commotion was heard on deck. Beall pulled a revolver on the helmsman and cried: “I am a Confederate officer. I seize this boat and take you prisoner. Resist at your peril!” Simultaneously, Burley performed the same operation on the captain-purser, Ashley, ordering him into the cabin while he counted three; and, as Ashley afterwards tersely remarked, “Before the end of the count I was in the ladies’ cabin.” The twenty conspirators produced from the trunk swords and pistols, and stood at anus. The eighty passengers and the crew were transformed into prisoners in the twinkling of an eye; a guard was placed over them, and they were huddled in the main cabin. The Confederate flag was then unfurled to the breeze. The boat was headed for Middle Bass Island, where the prisoners were landed, and where a small boat, the Island Queen , was also captured, its passengers taken into similar custody, and the craft scuttled. Then it was that the true object of the undertaking w r as revealed: nothing less than the capture of the prison camp on Johnson’s Island, and the release of the 2,500 Confederates there imprisoned. Under a full moon the PhUo-Parsons , with its new officers, steamed toward the prison isle. A rocket signal was expected from spies that were operating there, and among the crew of the United States gunboat Michigan, but none appeared. Their plans had manifestly failed. At this critical moment, when the outline of the guns on the Michigan could be seen, most of the privateers under Beall and Burley mutinied on the ground that the plans for co-operation had failed. Expostulations with them proving unavailing, Beall compelled the mutineers to sign an extraordinary document vindicating his action as leader of the expedition. Thus was frustrated the original scheme of release of the campful of prisoners, and the possible attack afterwards of the Lake Erie cities. The hold-up had failed, and an ignominious retreat was begun. The next morning the mutineers were landed on Canadian soil, and the steamer was deserted and permanently put out of business.

Beall escaped to the States, but was afterwards caught in an attempt to wreck a train, was court-martialled and hanged. After some time had elapsed, Burleigh—it is now time to give him his present name—was apprehended on Canadian soil, and tried in Toronto on an application of the Northern authorities for his extradition. It was one of the most exciting trials in the annals of the Dominion, the legal giants of the land being arrayed against each other, and a full court of judges trying the case. Public feeling ran high. The defence claimed that the acts of Burleigh were justifiable under the code of war. It ended with Burleigh’s extradition, and he was escorted from the gaol under a strong posse of police. He was afterwards tried in Ohio, where good luck was again his portion, for the jury disagreed, but the intrepid young fellow ended the whole chapter in his eventful career by making his escape from gaol. He actually returned to Toronto, and from Canada made his way across the seas to his native land. And this ends the episodes of the early days of Bennet Burleigh.