The idea was simple: outfit a schooner for war, recruit a crew of Southern sympathizers, capture one of the mail steamers that each month sailed out of San Francisco Bay carrying at least a million dollars in gold, then go terrorize the Pacific Coast as a Confederate privateer.The plot didn't come out of a Hollywood producer's script. It was real, and except for a slip of the tongue by one of the crewmen bragging during a night of drinking (as one account suggests) might have become more than just a minor footnote in California's role in Civil War history.
