Читать книгу A Confederate Biography - Dwight Hughes - Страница 12

Chapter 1

“Otro Alabama”

The British steamship Laurel lay placidly under the stars at the island road-stead of Funchal, Madeira, in the North Atlantic, four hundred miles west of Casablanca. Orders were given that there would be no communication with the shore except as necessary with Portuguese officials and for purchase of fuel. The captain reported a cargo of merchandise for Bermuda and Matamoras, twenty-nine passengers who were noted as Poles volunteering in the Confederate army, and a crew of forty men. Laurel had been coaled and made ready for sea; her papers at the customhouse were cleared for imminent departure. But the crewmen were ignorant of their true mission. After days of enforced idleness in harbor, the passengers milled impatiently about the moonlit deck as a lookout stood at the masthead with instructions to report immediately all approaching vessels.

During the midnight to 4 a.m. watch on 18 October 1864, a ship-rigged vessel came in sight, steaming slowly and displaying recognition lights. Passing ships regularly identified themselves so that their safety and progress could be recorded by national consulates and by Lloyd’s of London representatives. Captain Frederick Marryat’s codebook listed the names and types of English and American merchant vessels, as well as lights and flags to signal the ports of departure and destination. But this particular visitor turned and cruised by the harbor mouth a second and then a third time. The shadows on deck stirred and, watching intently from the rail, one of them murmured, “That’s her!”¹

As daylight came and the sun rose full of fire, the strange ship appeared once more with flags flying from her mastheads, displaying the identification number of Laurel, to which Laurel responded with the same. Boiler fires had been kindled and steam was up. The anchor chain was hove in to short stay. A cry arose from surrounding shore boats: “Otro Alabama!”—“Another Alabama!” One of Laurel’s passengers recalled the scene: “The vessel’s quiet swing to a single anchor only increased our restlessness to follow the black steamer, whose symmetrical outlines the bright light played fairly upon and made her appear to be the very object for which we had left Liverpool.” The writer was James Iredell Waddell, a North Carolinian lawyer’s son who, despite civilian attire, was a lieutenant in the Confederate States navy. He carried orders to assume command of a new rebel raider and to continue depredations on Union commerce so effectively advanced by the CSS Alabama, a vessel now resting silently on the bottom of the English Channel after her fiery clash the previous June with the USS Kearsarge.

At ten o’clock Laurel steamed out to rendezvous. The day was fine, the atmosphere clear and bright; a stiff southwest wind rolled the little ship like a tub in heavy seas. As they approached, Lieutenant Waddell could see three words in large white letters across the stern of the vessel: Sea King—London. Other passengers scanned the newcomer with spyglasses, rendered opinions, and seemed delighted with her looks. Some faults were found, but for a merchant ship, most thought she was remarkably well fitted for their purposes. “For my own part,” recorded Midshipman John Mason in his personal journal, “being no judge of such matters, I was like the little boy the cart ran over, I had not a word to say. . . . One thing however pleased me very much. She was a full rigged ship & as I looked at her three tall masts & her yards & rigging, I thought what a fine opportunity I would have of learning seamanship & I made up my mind to make the most of it.”²

The two ships sought refuge in the lee of a nearby volcanic rock called Las Desertas, providing calm water, deep holding ground, and isolation from suspicious authorities. Sea King’s anchor plunged to the bottom as Laurel made fast alongside. Ship’s Surgeon Dr. Charles E. Lining, a South Carolinian, also kept a journal: “I immediately went on board to take a glance of what is to be my home for many, many months. I found her a splendid, roomy ship, with a fine wardroom, but nearly entirely void of furniture etc.”³

Sea King carried a large quantity of provisions and seven hundred tons of coal, much more than the bunkers could stow; bagged piles of the dirty fuel occupied parts of the cavernous hold and berth deck. Laurel’s holds were crammed with equipment, supplies, and bales of clothing to convert a peaceful merchant ship into a deadly commerce destroyer and to sustain her on a long cruise. There was no time to lose. Despite all efforts at secrecy, those in Madeira with memories of that renowned vessel understood that the stranger was “otro Alabama.” And as Laurel waited in Madeira harbor, U.S. consul Robert Bayman had been alerted to Laurel’s purpose and had been watching. He badgered authorities to detain her for purported violations of international law—claiming she was just another rebel pirate—and sent out reports and calls for assistance on every departing ship. An American man-of-war could appear any time.

Fires were kept in Sea King’s boilers with steam up, the anchor cable ready to slip at a moment’s notice. Laurel’s passengers—Confederate navy officers, warrant officers, and petty officers—shifted their personal gear to Sea King. Tackles were erected and purchases rigged to the main yardarm as crews of both ships began transferring cargo, a demanding task normally accomplished in port. “Being thus shorthanded & thinking it no time to stand on our dignity,” noted Midshipman Mason, “all of us, the officers, went to work with a will. . . .” They removed coats and vests, rolled up sleeves, and began breaking out cases from Laurel and hoisting them on board Sea King. Men and officers kept hard at it until midnight, taking time for only meals and a break for grog. Mason turned in that night “tired to death with sore hands & exhausted body.” If this sort of life lasted much longer, he thought, they would all become expert sailors; it would be good for their health.

In the fourth year of bloody, frustrating conflict, these warriors of the sea finally could do what they did best: take the fight to the enemy in a fine blue-water ship, a rare opportunity in the Confederate States navy. They were more cynical than when the struggle began but not disillusioned; morale and expectations were high.

A fishing boat with five Portuguese came alongside. Waddell bought some fish, invited the fishermen on board, plied them with liquor, employed them in the work, and detained them overnight so they could not spread word in Funchal of the cargo transfer. Work continued at daylight as the wind shifted and the vessels ground dangerously against each other. Captain John F. Ramsay of Laurel presented Dr. Lining with a table, camp stool, and mattress for his cabin, which were much appreciated. Crates with guns, gun carriages and fittings, powder, shot, and shell, along with stores of all kinds were swung across.

The transfer was completed by 2 p.m., but no guns were mounted, no breeching or tackle bolts driven, no gunports cut, no powder magazine or shell room provided; all had been hurriedly piled in a lumbering, confused mass. Lieutenant William Whittle, second in command to James Waddell, recalled, “Every particle of work, of bringing order out of chaos and providing for efficiently putting everything in a condition for service, and of converting this ship into an armed cruiser at sea, amidst wind and storm, if encountered, stared us in the face.”⁴

Sea King, commanded by Captain Peter Suther Corbett, was, like Laurel, a registered British merchantman. Corbett executed written authority from the owners to sell the vessel outside British jurisdiction for not less that £45,000. Lieutenant Waddell assumed ownership in the name of the Confederacy. “I felt I had a good and fast ship under my feet,” he recalled, “but there was a vast deal of work in as well as outside of her to be done, and to accomplish all that a crew was necessary.”

Sailors of both ships were called aft on the main deck where Captain Corbett informed them that Sea King had been sold and now would become a Confederate cruiser: “As you are all young men, I advise you to join her, as you will make a fine thing of it.” Waddell emerged from his cabin and mounted the ladder to the quarterdeck in gray uniform with sword and pistol, the gold stripes of a lieutenant on his sleeves. He was over six feet and two hundred pounds with broad shoulders and thick, dark hair. Corbett introduced Waddell as the new captain without mentioning his name. One of the Laurel passengers—another disguised Confederate—told the sailors on deck that Waddell was Captain Raphael Semmes, former commander of Alabama. This alarming bit of Confederate disinformation would echo halfway around the globe.⁵

Waddell was forty years old with over twenty years in the U.S. Navy, having mastered the skills of the mariner across many oceans. Upon resigning to join the Confederacy, he had declared that he owned no property in the seceded states and was not hostile to the Constitution. He venerated the U.S. flag and only desired “to hazard life and limb in its defense against some foreign foe.” He wished it to be understood that “no doctrine of the right of secession, no wish for disunion of the States impel me, but simply because my home is the home of my people in the South, and I cannot bear arms against it or them.”⁶

But this was his first command and Waddell remembered feeling completely alone. The challenges were greater than any he had faced; his abilities were untested, and the trials ahead unknown. He stood at the quarterdeck rail above the gathered sailors that sunny October afternoon with only sea, sky, and rocks as witness. He blandly informed them that the vessel was the property of the Confederate States with the name Shenandoah. Any who joined would receive kind treatment and good wages. He read his commission, turned, and walked into the cabin. “For all the effect it had, [Waddell] might have spoken to the winds,” recalled another of his officers, Lieutenant John Grimball. Over a hundred sailors were needed to sail the ship and man the guns, but just twenty-three signed on and most of those shipped for only six months.⁷

Two years earlier, August 1862, the new CSS Alabama rendezvoused with her stores ship near the island of Terceira in the Azores for the same purposes. Captain Semmes was equally concerned then: “I could not know how many of them would engage with me. . . . No creature can be more whimsical than a sailor, until you have bound him past recall, unless indeed it be a woman.” With officers in full uniform and crew neatly dressed, Semmes mounted a gun carriage as his clerk solemnly read the commission and orders from the secretary of the navy. At a wave of his hand, the British flag dropped and the Confederate banner appeared at the peak. The commissioning pennant of a man-of-war streamed from the main royal masthead; a gun roared out in salute. The air was rent by cheers from officers and men as the band played “Dixie,” “that soul-stirring national anthem of the new-born government.”⁸

They would be fighting, Semmes told them, “the battles of the oppressed against the oppressor, and this consideration alone should be enough to nerve the arm of every generous sailor.” However, he would not expect foreign sailors to understand the rights or wrongs of nations, and so he explained the individual advantages: adventure, new ports, and money. “Like a skillful Secretary of the Treasury, I put the budget to them in the very best aspect.” Payment in gold, double ordinary wages, and prize money would be theirs. Semmes recruited eighty of ninety men from the two ships and felt very much relieved.⁹

Captain Waddell hoped to repeat this performance but didn’t carry it off, for the Alabama had looked like a man-of-war, built and configured specifically as a cruiser. Semmes had his guns mounted, provisions stowed, and ship in order. His decks had not presented the discouraging and chaotic appearance of Shenandoah. Midshipman Mason was conscious of these precedents, having brought with him a copy of Semmes’s first memoir, The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter, published in London a few months earlier. Alabama’s captain would become an admiral and leading naval hero of the Confederacy, and Mason would quickly conclude that Waddell was not cut from the same cloth.

Commander James Bulloch, Confederate naval agent in England, had supervised the design and building of Alabama and sent her to sea. He purchased and fitted out Sea King and Laurel and did everything possible to provide a full complement of men. As explained in his instructions to Waddell, Bulloch engaged an unusually large crew for Laurel including only young and, as far as possible, unmarried men “whose spirit of adventure and lack of home cares would, it was thought, naturally incline them to a roving cruise.” He authorized an enlistment bounty and wages above normal rates, promising that the navy department would supply whatever Waddell chose to expend. “As seamen, so far as our service is concerned, are merchantable articles with a market value, you must either pay the price demanded or dispense with their services, which would cause the abandonment of your cruise.”¹⁰

The experienced warrant and petty officers that Bulloch provided and Waddell brought with him were mostly English and Irish, having never set foot on American soil, although several were Alabama veterans. Boatswain Harwood was an old Liverpool salt, a Royal Navy pensioner and member of the Royal Naval Reserves; he had been of particular assistance to Semmes in enlisting his crew. Bulloch requested that Captain Ramsay of Laurel and Captain Corbett of Sea King encourage their men to join. Both were Confederate sympathizers, and Ramsay was a commissioned lieutenant in the Confederate navy as well as licensed British merchant master.

Liquor flowed as the officers struggled to convince sailors to sign on. One seaman reported that a bucket of gold sovereigns appeared: “The officers took up handfuls to tempt the men on deck.” They were promised the best of living conditions, provisions out of ships captured, and prize money at the end of the war. Waddell told them that his orders were to simply destroy federal commerce; the vessel was not made to fight, and he intended to run away unless in a very urgent case. The Confederates anticipated that at least fifty men would sign on, which would prove sufficient until reinforcements could be enlisted from captured ships. They got less than half that.¹¹

Midshipman Mason faulted Commander Bulloch as well as British and American officials for making it difficult to recruit sailors. “The men got frightened at the looks of things, did not like the way they had been deceived, in short got the old devil into them.” Some were “considerably riled.” Sea King quartermaster John Ellison, another member of the Royal Naval Reserves, had never earned a shilling in America in his life and did not wish to fight for it. England was his country and he was not ashamed to own it. Pointing to his reserves cap, Ellison stated: “If I were to desert from this, you cannot place any confidence in me.”¹²

Captain Corbett was said to be the worse for drink, upsetting his former crewmen even further by refusing to immediately pay three months’ wages for breach of contract as entitled by British law. And the political climate in England had changed, reflecting a marked loss of both sympathy for the Confederacy and confidence in Southern victory. Laws forbidding the Queen’s subjects to take service in a foreign navy, a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment, were being more stringently enforced. So, despite all inducements, most of the sailors insisted on returning with Laurel.

Captain Corbett and Captain Ramsay advised Waddell not to continue with so small a crew. It was too dangerous. Waddell conferred with his new first lieutenant, suggesting that they proceed south to Tenerife in the Canary Islands and communicate with Commander Bulloch to have a crew sent to them. But Lieutenant Whittle differed with his captain, as he would in the future. He knew each of the lieutenants personally; they were all “to the manor born.” He recalled the sad fate of the CSS Rappahannock, which a year before had gone into Calais for repairs and been held inactive ever since by stubborn French officials and Union blockaders. Repeating such a course, he counseled, would bring ignominious failure. “Don’t confer, sir, with those who are not going with us. Call your young officers together and learn from their assurances what they can and will do.” Waddell did convene a conference and the sentiment was unanimous: take the ocean. “Let those who hear the sequel judge the wisdom of the decision,” Whittle wrote years later.¹³

The captain of a ship of war was regarded as supreme in all things. He remained aloof and normally did not share details of the mission, much less request conferences with his officers on fundamental strategic decisions. Only Captain Waddell and First Lieutenant Whittle had been told where they were bound and for what purposes. In contrast to Waddell’s apparent indecision and lack of resolve, Bulloch would later note, the junior officers demonstrated that “pluck and that ingrained verve and aptitude of the sea which is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race.”¹⁴

Dr. Lining saw no chance of recruiting men in any port within many a long mile, and he did not wish to risk being detained or blockaded. They had plenty to eat—the ship was well provisioned—but nothing else. The wardroom was bare of furniture; staterooms had perhaps a washstand and a shelf but no lockers, no drawers, most of them not even bunks, not a chair apiece; and no storerooms existed for boatswain, sail, or gunnery supplies. But the holds were large and the wardroom and berth deck were spacious. They began striking everything below, putting it anywhere to clear the decks.

Just then, a vessel with the look of a warship appeared over the horizon bearing down upon them under topsails. They were armed only with swords and pistols, Enfield rifles, and two small saluting and signaling cannon. The big guns remained in crates disguised as “machinery.” “I, for one,” wrote Lining, “thought our cruise would be but a short one.” Hands were ordered to the anchor windlass as engineers rushed to generate steam. Laurel raised her anchor and bore away for the strange sail to lead her away, if possible, should she prove a Yankee. It was a gallant action on Captain Ramsay’s part, noted the doctor: “[I] began to think the anchor would never come in, & that my arms & shoulders would break first, but we worked away.” Suddenly the stranger sheered away setting English colors. Laurel returned and stood by while Shenandoah finally got under way. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, the weather rough with heavy swell running.

Letters home were hurriedly prepared. Captain Waddell wrote final dispatches including a note to Liverpool expressing doubts that he would accomplish all that was expected. Bulloch would recall this letter as “somewhat desponding.” The mail was sent across and Laurel was off under steam for Tenerife where she was to coal, proceed to Nassau, and then try running the blockade. Captain Ramsay and crew gave three cheers as Laurel passed, and they were returned with a will, wrote Midshipman Mason: “[We will] never . . . see her again, most probably, for we are bound on a cruise, which will last until the end of the war, provided, of course, we are not sunk in the meantime.” Mason superintended crewmen on the forecastle securing the anchor for sea under the eye of a lieutenant. It was his first watch on Shenandoah but “it was not the last, I’m happy to say.”¹⁵

A little before sundown the Confederate flag was raised—unnoticed, wrote Lining, by all except himself and the officer on deck. “We with our small crew, willing, however, to suffer & do all we could . . . started off on our cruise, our only trust being in a just God, and in our cause.” Having discharged the Portuguese fishermen (who were nearly swamped astern by the screw wake), Shenandoah stood clear of the land to the southwest. About 9 p.m., the engine was stopped, boiler fires banked, and topsails set. The doctor went to bed directly after supper, more tired, he thought, than ever in his life. The Confederate ensign flying at the peak was the second national pattern with the familiar battle flag for the canton and a pure white field.

Captain Waddell’s thoughts that evening of 19 October 1864 were not recorded. In a postwar report to posterity, he sounded more confident (and more poetic) than he undoubtedly felt at the time:

And the little adventurer entered upon her new career, throwing out to the breeze the flag of the South, and demanded a place upon that vast ocean of water without fear or favor. That flag unfolded itself gracefully to the freshening breeze, and declared the majesty of the country it represented amid the cheers of a handful of brave-hearted men, and she dashed upon her native element as if more than equal to the contest, cheered on by acclamations from Laurel, which was steaming away for the land we love, to tell the tale to those who would rejoice that another Confederate cruiser was afloat.

At almost the same moment and an ocean away, as autumn blazed the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, General Philip Sheridan routed Confederates under Jubal Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek, a bloody ending to the Second Valley Campaign. This beautiful breadbasket of the South was securely in Union hands. Grant had instructed Sheridan that the valley be made such a waste that, to fly over it, a crow would have to carry rations. By spring Sheridan’s troops would denude the area of crops, livestock, and farm buildings; residents would be starving. The very day that lost one Shenandoah to the Confederacy saw the birth of another. The new warship honored the place, recalled Lieutenant Whittle, “where the brave Stonewall Jackson always so discomfited the enemy. The burning there of homes over defenseless women and children made the selection of the name not inappropriate for a cruiser, which was to lead a torchlight procession around the world and into every ocean.”¹⁶

For these Southerners, the ship symbolized the future in their determination to emulate her famous sisters and to achieve retribution, victory, and peace. The cruise would be the subject of history “successful or not,” concluded Lieutenant Grimball. But the CSS Shenandoah was not a man-of-war yet—dangerously undermanned, guns not mounted, chaos on deck and below, an untested foreign crew, vulnerable to both the enemy and the weather, she sallied forth into the Atlantic with more hope than substance.