| Year | Command | Vessel | Voyage |
| 1850s | Officer | Pacific Mail Lines Steamship Oregon | Coastal run between San Francisco and Panama |
| 1862-63 | Captain | Schooner Chapman | Thwarted Trip/Story Below |
At one point in his sailing career, Captain Law was in command of the schooner Storm Cloud, and was so erratic in his conduct that the owners, believing that he intended to run off with her, sent an agent to Valparaiso and relieved Law of his charge of the vessel. At that time, he was 39 years old, and had sailed both the Atlantic and the Pacific. He has resided in Charleston, South Carolina, for two years and was engaged in running slaves from Richmond to New Orleans.
Rebel Civil War sympathizer, Asbury Harpending, born in Kentucky at at 23 the possessor of a fortune accumulated in the mines of California and Mexico, hired him to Captain the schooner Chapman. On February 17 (of 1862 or '63?), The Chapman was in the news for making the trip from New York to San Francisco in 138 days, and 38 days from Valparaiso, carrying Captain Cousins, his wife and three children, and a cargo of beans for Hellman Bros.
When Harpending saw Captain Law's "sinister, villainous mug" and considered him capable of any crime, and all in all "the most repulsive reptile in appearance I ever set eyes on,", he dismissed him. He recalled him when he found no other candidates for his plan, which was to "sail the Chapman to some islands off the coast of Mexico, transform her into a fighting craft, proceed to Manzanillo, exhibit our letters of marque and my captain's commission in the Confederate Navy, and then lie in wait for the first Pacific Mail liner that entered the harbor, capture her -- peacefully if possible, forcibly if we must." Harpending then planned to equip the captured liner as a privateer and intercept two more eastbound Pacific Mail steamers. His plan was to stop the flow of millions of dollars in gold from California to Union Troops, and thus cripple the North in the Civil War.