Before the _Nautilus_ got round from New Orleans to the
Northern Atlantic coast with the prisoner on board, the sentence had
been approved, and he was a man without a country.
The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
Navy--it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I
do not remember--was requested to put Nolan on board a government
vessel bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so
far confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of
the country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much
out of favour; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I
have explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But
the commander to whom he was intrusted--perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
though I think it was one of the younger men--we are all old enough
now--regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
died.
When I was second officer of the _Intrepid_, some thirty years after,
I saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever
since that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in
this way--
WASHINGTON (with a date, which
must have been late in 1807).
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