As the end of the war approached, Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory planned a desperate mission to supply General Lee’s army after its retreat from Richmond. Mallory dispatched Lt. J. Pembroke Jones to locate Capt. John Newland Maffitt at Matamoras or Havana and organize the supply attempt.
Both Maffitt and Jones likely knew each other in the prewar at Wilmington, North Carolina, as Maffitt was a US Navy Lt. surveying the coast adjacent to the Cape Fear River, and Lt. Jones was often in Wilmington where his wife resided. Jones served aboard the CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads in 1862; he commanded the ironclad CSS Raleigh in April 1864 which scattered the enemy blockading fleet off Wilmington.
A Final Dash to Supply Lee’s Army
“Shortly after the Owl departed Galveston [approximately mid-March 1865], Lt. J. Pembroke Jones, assigned to special service, passed through Galveston from Richmond in search of Maffitt. [Secretary of the Navy Stephen] Mallory had ordered Jones to make his way out of the Confederacy as best he could, report to Maffitt, purchase two steamers to take supplies to Lee on an urgent basis, one for a run up [Virginia’s] York River, the other up the James River. Jones had with him money in specie checks and was accompanied by pilots for the Virginia river trips, but when they reached the Mississippi headed for Texas, Lt. Jones heard of the end of the war in the East.
Jones sent the pilots home, continued alone to Galveston, and conferred with General John B. Magruder, who informed him the war would not be continued in Texas. Jones decided to continue to Matamoras, where he took a steamer to Havana and found Maffitt. Lt. Jones probably brought with him the well-known 24 February 1865 letter from Navy Secretary Mallory. It was the last from Mallory to Maffitt, and desperation was now apparent.”
High Seas Confederate. The Life and Times of John Newlsnd Maffitt. Royce Shingleton. University of South Carolina Press, 1994, pp. 97-98)