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John Slidell, detail
John Slidell, appointed as Confederate commissioner to France, and James Murray Mason, appointed as commissioner to Great Britain, accompanied by their private secretaries, and their families, sailed from Charleston.  Slipping through the Union blockade around the harbor aboard the small steamer Theodore, the party landed at Nassua in the Bahamas and went on to Havana in Cuba.  There they boarded the British mail packet Trent on the next step in their journey. They would not reach their destination for some time, however.  (By John Osborne) 
Source Citation: 
Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War in the United States of America (Hartford, CT: T.Belnap, 1874), 154.