|
- |
I N 1860, the United States had one
The Lincoln administration condemned the raiders' actions as acts of piracy. But the Confederates were only doing what the fledgling United States had done in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
Because the Southern states had no great tradition of blue-water maritime prowess, the Confederacy for the most part resorted to purchasing appropriate vessels abroad and converting them into warships in out-of-the-way anchorages. Most of the vessels that became raiders were built or purchased in Great Britain.
Such was the case with the CSS Shenandoah, which began life in Glasgow, Scotland, as the auxiliary steamer Sea King in 1863, and had made one commercial voyage to New Zealand prior to its purchase by the Confederates in September 1864. It sailed from Liverpool the following month, and was converted into a raider near Madeira, Portugal. Its captain, James I. Waddell, had orders to destroy the U.S. whaling fleet in the North Pacific.
The Sea King sailed in bare-bones condition, and the conversion that made it the CSS Shenandoah was hasty. The result was that the fledgling raider lacked many of the normal accoutrements of a warship, such as gun ports and cabin furniture. Most of the latter deficiencies were made up with items from captured ships. But there was one problem that could not be solved. The vessel had not been built for service in waters where it would come into contact with large amounts of ice.
Capt. Waddell's course took him south of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. In the course of this leg of the voyage, problems developed with the ship's auxiliary steam engine that could not be fixed at sea. At Melbourne, Australia, where Waddell was to rendezvous with a collier, the vessel was repaired in a government dry dock--not without protests from the local U.S. consul. The British made a show of enforcing neutrality laws, but in the end, Waddell's ship sailed with full coal bunkers and repairs complete. It was Feb. 18, 1865.
After a stop at Ascension Island, where it captured and burned four whalers, the Shenandoah headed for the North Pacific. Waddell used charts obtained from captured vessels to determine where the whaling fleet was likely to be. A visit to the Sea of Okhotsk and the waters around the Kamchatka Peninsula netted only one capture, but the raider's venture into the Bering Sea from June 22 to June 28 yielded 24 whalers.
However, the Shenandoah also had several hair-raising encounters with arctic pack ice. Convinced that he had done as much damage as possible to the U.S. whaling fleet, Waddell turned south for more temperate waters.
From news obtained in Australia, Waddell knew the war was going badly for the Confederacy. Vessels captured in the Bering Sea carried San Francisco newspapers that contained news of Lee's surrender and Lincoln's assassination. But news-papers in those days were often unreliable. It was not until he made contact with a British merchant vessel off Baja California on Aug. 2 that Waddell was convinced the war was over.
If the Shenandoah remained a warship without a national affiliation, the crew would be regarded as pirates. Waddell's only alternative was to disarm the ship, sail it to an appropriate port and turn it over to the authorities. The first part was easy; the raider's six great guns were dismounted and stowed in the hold, along with all the small arms. Picking a port was more difficult.
Waddell decided to turn the ship over to the British, but put off selecting a port until after rounding Cape Horn. He ultimately rejected Cape Town because of the hardships associated with leaving his officers penniless and far from home, settling instead on Liverpool, where the vessel's cruise had begun.
With supplies running low and scurvy in evidence among the crew, the Shenandoah entered England's Mersey River on Nov. 6, 1865. After negotiations with the British Foreign Office, the crew was allowed to go free, and the ship was turned over to the Royal Navy for transfer to the U.S. government.
The cruise of the CSS Shenandoah had lasted 13 months and covered 58,000 miles, circumnavigating the globe. Waddell had captured 38 vessels, burnt 32 and ransomed six, and taken 1,053 prisoners. The value of those ships and their cargoes was estimated at the time at $1.4 million. Its crew had suffered no deaths in battle, although two men died of illness.
Waddell and his officers could not return to the United States for a number of years, but all were eventually pardoned and resumed their lives as American citizens. Waddell died in 1886, and was buried in Annapolis. The U.S. Navy named a destroyer after him in the 1960s. The Shenandoah was sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar and used as a merchant vessel until it struck a reef and sank in 1879.
Chaffin's prose is not the most exciting, but he does a competent job of presenting the story. Unfortunately, he does not appear to be good at keeping his facts straight. To cite one example among a great many, at one point (page 352) we learn that Waddell turned over to the British authorities ship's funds totaling $820.38, but that the amount ultimately received by the U.S. authorities was $828.38 (page 359). Chaffin also misuses a number of naval terms, one example of which is his reference to Waddell's having been buried in a cemetery adjacent to the "U.S. Navy Academy" (should be "Naval").
Publishing houses used to employ fact checkers and copy editors to catch such mistakes and correct them; Hill and Wang seems to have dispensed with this particular measure for ensuring accuracy. In summary, this is a good story, sloppily told.
DANE HARTGROVE, formerly of Stafford County, is a freelance writer living in Salisbury, N.C. Send e-mail to his attention to gwoolf@freelance star.com.
