Please correct me if I am wrong, but, according to the rules of war, any vessel of war, when within the boundaries of a neutral port, should not have her guns loaded, and if she does, this would constitute an illegal act.
I have today received the journal of an officer of one of the Confederate cruisers, who reveals that when the vessel he was upon, was leaving a neutral port that they had just been in, but before getting outside the proper boundaries, had had her guns loaded quietly, for any eventualities, because of some trouble they had had within this port. If his entry were the truth, then the cruiser would have been doing an illegal action.
This action has apparently not been noted in any published sources, previously, and it seems that it has not been noticed by other researchers, or else just glossed over.