Page 58 - NS-2 Textbook

THE CIVIL WAR 51

orders, nlllstered his ere"v of volunteers and English and
Irish adventurers, and raised the Confederate ensign.
Now the CSS Alabama was a ship of war.
Senunes took twenty ships in the North Atlantic over
the next two months, then sailed to the Caribbean. He
captured a number of ships there, and then moved into
the Gulf of Mexico. Off Galveston he tricked a Union
gtrnboat away from other Union Navy support and
quickly sank her. For eighteen months Semmes cruised
the world's oceans-the Caribbean, South Atlantic, In-
dian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and South China Sea. His
crew exhausted and his ship badly in need of repairs, he
brought the Alabama into the French port of Cherbourg
on 11 Jlrne 1864 and requested docking.
In the harbor, the Alabal1la was spotted by the Amer-
ican consul. He telegraphed Captain John Winslow of the
U.S. sloop Kearsarge, then off Holland. Three days later
the Union ship arrived off Cherbourg. French authorities
now refused Semmes docking rights, so he refueled and
Confederate admiral Raphael Semmes commanded the Confeder~
ate commerce raider Alabama during the Civil War. He and Al- challenged Winslow to a single-ship duel outside French
territorial ·waters.
abama drove most Union commercial shipping from the North At-
lantic during much of the war. On 19 Jtrne the Alabama steamed out of port, follow-
ing the Kearsarge into international waters. A French iron-
On her trial nill, the ship was sailed to the Portuguese clad followed and anchored at the 3-mile limit, and an
Azores, where officials looked the other way when a English yacht, the DeerhOlll1d, stood by to observe the ac-
chartered British ship transferred a battery of six 32- tion. 1110usands of spectators lined the shore to see the
pounders and other armament to the ship. Semmes then ballle. The ships fired a number of broadsides without
took the ship outside territorial waters to perform a ship- much effect because of the long range. Then the Kearsarge
commissioning ceremony. He read his Confederate Navy came about, and the two ships steamed in a broad circle

The most famous of the Confederate raiders was the (55 Alabama, commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes. After capturing sixty-plus Union
vessels during commerce raiding, the Alabama was finally sunk off Cherbourg, France, in a fierce engagement with the U.S. Navy sloop
Kearsarge. Above, sailors in the Kearsarge cheer as Semmes strikes his colors. Note the 11-inch Dahlgren gun in the center.