Peter Tait: A Remarkable Story

By John E. Waite
Illustrated, maps, appendices, notes, index, 338 pp., 2005. Milnford Publications, Leigh House, Little Norton, Stoke sub Hamdon, UK TA14 6TE, £20 plus shipping, (check exchange rates).

Reviewer: Joseph Derie
Joseph Derie is a VMI graduate and a long time Civil War buff and military book reviewer. A retired Coast Guard officer and licensed officer of the Merchant Marine, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.

Review:
Sir Peter Tait JP DL (1828-1890) was a clothing manufacturer in Limerick, Ireland. He was reputed to be the first to use steam-powered sewing machines to manufacture clothing and obtained many contracts to furnish shirts to the Royal Navy and uniforms for the Canadian Volunteer Militia, the Royal Irish Constabulary Force as well as for the British Army. (Limerick legend has it the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars were wearing Tait-supplied shirts when they participated in the Charge of the Light Brigade.)

He eventually became Deputy Lieutenant of Limerick, its mayor for three successive years and was knighted. Not bad for a man who started out selling shirts out of a basket to merchant seamen on the city docks. Peter Tait's connection to the Civil War then becomes obvious: furnishing uniforms to the Confederate Army and blockade running.

His brother's visit to Richmond in December 1863, and his contact with James R. Seddon, the Confederacy's Secretary of War, and Col. Alexander Lawton, Quartermaster General of the Confederate Army, are chronicled in this volume and Confederate records.

Tait offered to supply uniforms at lower prices and better quality than other contractors. He eventually got a contract to furnish uniforms to the Confederate Army. Later he got contracts for uniforms from the State of Alabama and the Trans-Mississippi Department.

Author Waite estimates about 48,500 Tait uniforms worth some 42,500 pounds and who knows what in Confederate currency were shipped to the Confederacy via Wilmington. He cites records that 4,000 suits, tunics and trousers were received in the Richmond Depot at the end of 1864. He feels they were probably part of the Tait contract but cites no source in the notes.

Buttons with Tait's backmarks have been discovered in Texas and buttons with his backmarks have also been found in the Eastern Confederacy. A picture of Tait Confederate uniform buttons is included. There are also several paragraphs on how to identify a Tait Confederate uniform via its stitching, buttons, shank and material, but the author does not state if there are any Tait Confederate uniforms remaining. The uniforms were sent to the Confederacy in blockade-runners. Waite names three: The Evelyn, Adelaide and Condor. Tait had a two-thirds share in the Evelyn, which Waite says was the last vessel to leave Wilmington prior to the fall of Fort Fisher.

Stephen R. Wise's Lifeline of the Confederacy does not agree. He shows the Evelyn only running the blockade to Galveston from Havana in February, March and April 1865, and never to Wilmington.

The Adelaide survived the war, but is listed by Wise as only being used to carry supplies to England and thus was not a true blockade-runner. The Condor carrying Tait uniforms for the Confederate Army and the State of Alabama was caught by the Union Navy and run aground below Fort Fisher on Oct. 7, 1864, with most of the cargo eventually being saved.

This was the vessel the famed spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow was on. She insisted on going ashore and drowned, weighted down with gold, when her boat capsized.

Peter Tait is a volume for the aficionado of blockade-runners and European clothing contractors of Confederate uniforms. It is well-written, but only about 40 pages are Civil War-related and some of that information is contradicted by other sources. Still, it's more information on a subject we all love.

Editor's Note: Author John E. Waite responds as follows:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment on Mr. Derie's review of my book Peter Tait: A Remarkable Story.

If I have disagreed with any expert in the field of Civil War research, it is only on the basis of what I believed to be reliable evidence, and of course I stand to be corrected if I have got my facts wrong. For this reason, and in any case, I should of course be pleased to correspond with any of your readers who would like further information about anything I have written.

However, there in one apparent disagreement, which I should like to mention here, because what I have said is central to Peter Tait's involvement in the supply of uniforms to the Confederacy and his relationship with Alexander Collie.

Mr. Derie points out that Stephen R. Wise does not agree that the SS Evelyn ran the blockade into Wilmington or was the last vessel to leave prior to the fall of Fort Fisher.

On the other hand, Marcus W. Price in Ships That Tested The Blockade of the Carolina Ports, 1861-1865 records her as making one successful run in 1864 and Lloyds List recorded on 9 February 1865 that the Evelyn "which was supposed to have been captured in Cape Fear River by the Federals, has arrived at Nassau with cotton; she reports that the SS North Heath was the only steamer in Wilmington when she left." The North Heath was later scuttled by the Confederates in the channel at Wilmington.