On 8 November 1861, the USS San Jacinto approached the British steamer Trent in the Bahama Channel, between the Bahamas and Cuba. Though Trent was clearly flying the Union Jack, Captain Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy, ordered a shot fired across her bow. Trent’s captain ordered his ship to come to.
An American party went aboard and found the men Wilkes was looking for: Confederate ambassadors John Slidell and James Murray Mason.
Wilkes took Slidell and Mason prisoner and brought them back to the San Jacinto. Thus began the Trent Affair, an international diplomatic crisis that threatened to bring the United States and Britain to war for the third time in 80 years.
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