CSS Alabama

1864

Cherbourg, Kearsarge, the Manet painting Location: English Channel, off Cherbourg, France · Coordinates: 49.65°N 1.62°W · Casualties: 9 · Survivors: ~170 (incl. 42 rescued by Deerhound) · Depth: 58 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Brought to battle by USS Kearsarge (John Winslow, commanding) off Cherbourg on 19 June 1864. After a 65-minute gun duel the Kearsarge's chain-armored hull shrugged off shell after shell while Alabama's own shells mostly failed to explode. She sank stern-first at 12:24. Captain Raphael Semmes and several officers were rescued by the British yacht Deerhound and escaped to England. · Fate: located 1984 · continental shelf · Type: commerce raider · screw sloop · Tonnage: 1,050 tons · Crew: 145 · Flag: Confederate States · Launched: 1862 Confederate commerce raider, built clandestinely in Liverpool. Took or destroyed 65 Union merchant ships across two oceans in two years. Brought to battle by USS Kearsarge off Cherbourg on 19 June 1864 and sunk in an hour in the only major Civil War engagement fought in European waters. Édouard Manet painted the duel two weeks later from sketches made at the scene; the wreck was located by the French Navy in 1984. The Vessel CSS Alabama was a Confederate commerce raider of the Confederate States Navy, built secretly at the John Laird Sons & Company yard at Birkenhead, England, between 1861 and 1862 under the cover designation "Enrica". She was 67 metres long, 1,050 tons displacement, and powered by a combination of full sail rig (barque configuration) and a 300-horsepower single-cylinder steam engine driving a retractable screw propeller. Her armament comprised six 32-pounder smoothbore guns on the broadside, plus one 110-pounder Armstrong rifled pivot gun forward and one 68-pounder smoothbore pivot gun aft. Her construction at a British shipyard was a sustained breach of British neutrality law during the American Civil War. The British Neutrality Laws of 1819 prohibited the construction in Britain of ships intended for the service of belligerents; the Confederate agents at Birkenhead had disguised the ship's intended purpose through the "Enrica" cover name and the use of a commercial contract with the fictitious Spanish merchant firm "Bravay & Co.". The British government, under sustained US diplomatic pressure, attempted to prevent her departure in July 1862; her departure on 29 July 1862 (for ostensible sea trials) was arranged to precede the formal British order to detain her by approximately 12 hours. Her master from August 1862 onwards was Captain Raphael Semmes, 53, a career naval officer who had resigned from the United States Navy in February 1861 to accept Confederate commission. Her co The Disaster The appearance of Alabama at Cherbourg was reported by the US consular service within hours of her arrival. The Union Navy's sloop-of-war USS Kearsarge, commanded by Captain John A. Winslow and anchored at Flushing in the Netherlands, received the intelligence on 12 June 1864 and immediately sailed for Cherbourg. Kearsarge arrived off Cherbourg on 14 June 1864 and anchored in the outer harbour to await Alabama's emergence; under French neutrality law, the French authorities prohibited Kearsarge from entering the inner harbour or conducting any action within French territorial waters. Captain Semmes's decision, made after three days of deliberation with his officers, was to accept the offered engagement. The tactical calculation was complex: Alabama was substantially worn and fouled, Kearsarge was a faster and slightly better-armed ship, and the engagement would be fought without any strategic necessity. But the alternative - an extended stay at Cherbourg - would have produced intolerable political pressure on the French government, which would have been forced eventually to intern Alabama under the French neutrality interpretation of Confederate naval status. CSS Alabama departed Cherbourg at 10:30 on 19 June 1864 and engaged USS Kearsarge in international waters approximately 11 kilometres north of Cherbourg. The engagement lasted approximately one hour, from 10:57 to 12:05. Both ships manoeuvred in a tightening circle at a range of approximately 500-900 metres; both deliver