Post by FKoE on Jun 27, 2004 12:51:20 GMT -5
High jinks on the high seas during the American Civil War cost Britain dear. Peter Elson looks at the fate of the infamous Alabama on its 140th anniversary
IF EVER proof was needed of Merseyside's international pre-eminence, you need look no further than the fate of the notorious Confederate commerce raider Alabama.
Built by Laird Bros at Birkenhead, and bought by the Confederates, she played an important part in the American Civil War. The 140th anniversary of the dramatic death of this ship occurred just a few days ago on June 19.
Three quarters of Alabama's original crew were from Merseyside. In a ferocious 40-minute battle, she was out-gunned by USS Kearsage, off Cherbourg. Less well-known is that Kearsage's guns were made by Fawcett's the famous Liverpool foundry, based near Duke Street.
Kearsage's captain, John Ancram Winslow, hoped to take Alabama's Captain Raphael Semmes (coincidentally an old cadet shipmate of his) and his surviving crew, which included 48 Merseyside seamen, but he was thwarted.
To their rescue came The Deerhound, a steam yacht, also built by Laird Bros, in Birkenhead. Deerhound snatched the crew from the English Channel, allowing them to rejoin the Confederate cause. Royal Naval officers presented Semmes with a solid gold ceremonial sword.
Before she sank in that long-ago summer of 1864, for 666 days after leaving the Mersey, Alabama sank or destroyed (usually by burning) 67 Union ships, including besting the warship USS Hatteras. However, Semmes never caused one death.
Why did the Southern States turn to Liverpool and Birkenhead for help? After seceding from the North, the Confederate States found their ports blockaded and the vital cotton trade imperilled. Having neither navy nor means to build one, they turned to their major transatlantic customers - Liverpool, its brokers and the Lancashire cotton manufacturing industry.
During the American Civil War, it is said more Confederate flags flew in Lancashire than in Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy capital.
Alabama was very nearly never built. At the time of the Civil War, Britain passed a Neutrality Act under which no armed vessel could be built for a foreign power.
However, Britain reckoned without the Confederate agent and European naval representative based in Liverpool, James Dunwoody Bulloch, a cousin of the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. Bulloch found a loophole in the law after consulting a Liverpool solicitor, which allowed Alabama to be constructed without her armament. Technically she was not a warship.
Much of Bulloch's planning and plotting is believed to have been done in the elegant buildings that still line Rumford Place and 19 Abercromby Square (now part of Liverpool University). This was the stupendous home of banker Charles K Prioleau and the Confederate headquarters. His wife, Mary Elizabeth, whose portrait is painted on the ceiling of their former home, held a Grand Bazaar at St George's Hall, Liverpool, which raised £20,000 for the Southern wounded soldiers' fund.
Union agents, meanwhile, were incensed. They had their Liverpool headquarters at the old Tower Buildings on the Strand and were aware of Alabama's creation across the Mersey.
Meanwhile, Bulloch, under near-constant surveillance by Northern agents, mostly recruited Alabama's crew at the Liver Hotel, South Road, Waterloo. When the Union's demands for British government action were finally acknowledged, the Prime Minister Lord John Russell despatched an impounding order by train. Hearing of this, Bulloch and his conspirators ordered Alabama to sea and she escaped to Moelfre, Anglesey, where she embarked more British crew. She then sailed directly to the Azores to have her armaments fitted.
A long and winding trail of the great and the good friends of the old Confederacy have found their way to Birkenhead to investigate the Alabama including John Jakes, the best-selling US author of North and South.
In 1988 there was a big row over the possibility of raising Alabama and to whom she belonged: the British who built and crewed her; the Americans who owned her and the French in whose waters she lay.
Other projects included plans to build a £3m replica at the original dock in Birkenhead, chaired by the broadcaster and historian Sir Ludovic Kennedy.
Attempts to smear the project with racist accusations, by saying it was "glorifying" the slave-owning South, caused Sir Ludovic to robustly riposte: "To say it's tainted with slavery is like saying that my writing about the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst has been tainted by the Nazi concentration camps."
Lack of funds caused the project to be abandoned by 1994 and the archive material accumulated was handed over to Wirral Council for safe-keeping.
Birkenhead's Williamson Museum & Art Gallery has a fine scale model of Alabama and the original Cammell Laird ledger containing details of her construction.
Gerry Williams, the Alabama Trust's historian, successfully stopped the Merseyside Development Corporation from filling in Laird's Monks Ferry No 4 Dock, where Laird Bros fitted out the ship. Liverpool designer Fred O'Brien, who has long fought for greater recognition of Alabama and Liverpool's part in the American Civil War, says: "You couldn't make up the Alabama story.
"So important is she that there has always been an Alabama in the US Navy and the current one is a nuclear submarine.
"Capt Semmes was a complete humanitarian, a real Southern gentleman, who never harmed any crews or passengers aboard the ships he destroyed. I was privileged to meet his descendant Capt Oliver Semmes, of the US Navy."
Bulloch became a Liverpool cotton broker, dying in 1901. He is buried in Toxteth Cemetery and the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected his memorial there, engraved with the words: "American by birth, British by choice".
The UDC will visit this and other Confederate sites next month. The British government's dilatory behaviour was roundly punished.
The US claimed reparation for its huge loss to shipping (which benefited Liverpool greatly). In its first ruling, the International Court of Justice fined the UK more than £3m for allowing Alabama to be built.
Southern seafarers attracted by Mersey's friendly reputation
THE likelihood of a friendly welcome brought another famous Confederate raider to Liverpool when the American Civil War ended. Liverpool was probably the only haven available after a 23,000-mile voyage via Cape Horn.
Shenandoah, which fired the last shots of the Civil War, had been patrolling the Far East destroying the Union's merchantmen and her commander, Capt Waddell, had no idea how the ship and crew would be received in the US on their return.
Instead, Shenandoah made for Liverpool, although her arrival at the Mersey Bar on November 6, 1865, caused great consternation. In spite of Liverpool favouring the Southern States, as always nobody wanted to be associated with the losers.
"Liverpool was aflame with gossip about Shenandoah's arrival. She was quietly stuck in the far end of the south docks at Herculaneum, double-berthed on the outside of another vessel," says Merseyside maritime historian Patrick Moran. The South still had plenty of Liverpool friends, led by
James Dunwoody Bulloch. Shenandoah's 130 crew surrendered, was arrested and released. Shenandoah looked shabby from having been at sea so long, but within days she was smartened up. Patrick Moran says: "My great grandfather was a boy living in Yates Street, in Dingle, near to Shenandoah's berth. He and a friend went to
have a look and got aboard, but were apprehended by the chief petty officer. Soon the chief officer was on the scene and, mindful of good public relations, noted that the boys must be from 'respectable families' as they were 'wearing boots'. He gave them the full tour and sent them on their way."
-SOURCE-
IF EVER proof was needed of Merseyside's international pre-eminence, you need look no further than the fate of the notorious Confederate commerce raider Alabama.
Built by Laird Bros at Birkenhead, and bought by the Confederates, she played an important part in the American Civil War. The 140th anniversary of the dramatic death of this ship occurred just a few days ago on June 19.
Three quarters of Alabama's original crew were from Merseyside. In a ferocious 40-minute battle, she was out-gunned by USS Kearsage, off Cherbourg. Less well-known is that Kearsage's guns were made by Fawcett's the famous Liverpool foundry, based near Duke Street.
Kearsage's captain, John Ancram Winslow, hoped to take Alabama's Captain Raphael Semmes (coincidentally an old cadet shipmate of his) and his surviving crew, which included 48 Merseyside seamen, but he was thwarted.
To their rescue came The Deerhound, a steam yacht, also built by Laird Bros, in Birkenhead. Deerhound snatched the crew from the English Channel, allowing them to rejoin the Confederate cause. Royal Naval officers presented Semmes with a solid gold ceremonial sword.
Before she sank in that long-ago summer of 1864, for 666 days after leaving the Mersey, Alabama sank or destroyed (usually by burning) 67 Union ships, including besting the warship USS Hatteras. However, Semmes never caused one death.
Why did the Southern States turn to Liverpool and Birkenhead for help? After seceding from the North, the Confederate States found their ports blockaded and the vital cotton trade imperilled. Having neither navy nor means to build one, they turned to their major transatlantic customers - Liverpool, its brokers and the Lancashire cotton manufacturing industry.
During the American Civil War, it is said more Confederate flags flew in Lancashire than in Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy capital.
Alabama was very nearly never built. At the time of the Civil War, Britain passed a Neutrality Act under which no armed vessel could be built for a foreign power.
However, Britain reckoned without the Confederate agent and European naval representative based in Liverpool, James Dunwoody Bulloch, a cousin of the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. Bulloch found a loophole in the law after consulting a Liverpool solicitor, which allowed Alabama to be constructed without her armament. Technically she was not a warship.
Much of Bulloch's planning and plotting is believed to have been done in the elegant buildings that still line Rumford Place and 19 Abercromby Square (now part of Liverpool University). This was the stupendous home of banker Charles K Prioleau and the Confederate headquarters. His wife, Mary Elizabeth, whose portrait is painted on the ceiling of their former home, held a Grand Bazaar at St George's Hall, Liverpool, which raised £20,000 for the Southern wounded soldiers' fund.
Union agents, meanwhile, were incensed. They had their Liverpool headquarters at the old Tower Buildings on the Strand and were aware of Alabama's creation across the Mersey.
Meanwhile, Bulloch, under near-constant surveillance by Northern agents, mostly recruited Alabama's crew at the Liver Hotel, South Road, Waterloo. When the Union's demands for British government action were finally acknowledged, the Prime Minister Lord John Russell despatched an impounding order by train. Hearing of this, Bulloch and his conspirators ordered Alabama to sea and she escaped to Moelfre, Anglesey, where she embarked more British crew. She then sailed directly to the Azores to have her armaments fitted.
A long and winding trail of the great and the good friends of the old Confederacy have found their way to Birkenhead to investigate the Alabama including John Jakes, the best-selling US author of North and South.
In 1988 there was a big row over the possibility of raising Alabama and to whom she belonged: the British who built and crewed her; the Americans who owned her and the French in whose waters she lay.
Other projects included plans to build a £3m replica at the original dock in Birkenhead, chaired by the broadcaster and historian Sir Ludovic Kennedy.
Attempts to smear the project with racist accusations, by saying it was "glorifying" the slave-owning South, caused Sir Ludovic to robustly riposte: "To say it's tainted with slavery is like saying that my writing about the battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst has been tainted by the Nazi concentration camps."
Lack of funds caused the project to be abandoned by 1994 and the archive material accumulated was handed over to Wirral Council for safe-keeping.
Birkenhead's Williamson Museum & Art Gallery has a fine scale model of Alabama and the original Cammell Laird ledger containing details of her construction.
Gerry Williams, the Alabama Trust's historian, successfully stopped the Merseyside Development Corporation from filling in Laird's Monks Ferry No 4 Dock, where Laird Bros fitted out the ship. Liverpool designer Fred O'Brien, who has long fought for greater recognition of Alabama and Liverpool's part in the American Civil War, says: "You couldn't make up the Alabama story.
"So important is she that there has always been an Alabama in the US Navy and the current one is a nuclear submarine.
"Capt Semmes was a complete humanitarian, a real Southern gentleman, who never harmed any crews or passengers aboard the ships he destroyed. I was privileged to meet his descendant Capt Oliver Semmes, of the US Navy."
Bulloch became a Liverpool cotton broker, dying in 1901. He is buried in Toxteth Cemetery and the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected his memorial there, engraved with the words: "American by birth, British by choice".
The UDC will visit this and other Confederate sites next month. The British government's dilatory behaviour was roundly punished.
The US claimed reparation for its huge loss to shipping (which benefited Liverpool greatly). In its first ruling, the International Court of Justice fined the UK more than £3m for allowing Alabama to be built.
Southern seafarers attracted by Mersey's friendly reputation
THE likelihood of a friendly welcome brought another famous Confederate raider to Liverpool when the American Civil War ended. Liverpool was probably the only haven available after a 23,000-mile voyage via Cape Horn.
Shenandoah, which fired the last shots of the Civil War, had been patrolling the Far East destroying the Union's merchantmen and her commander, Capt Waddell, had no idea how the ship and crew would be received in the US on their return.
Instead, Shenandoah made for Liverpool, although her arrival at the Mersey Bar on November 6, 1865, caused great consternation. In spite of Liverpool favouring the Southern States, as always nobody wanted to be associated with the losers.
"Liverpool was aflame with gossip about Shenandoah's arrival. She was quietly stuck in the far end of the south docks at Herculaneum, double-berthed on the outside of another vessel," says Merseyside maritime historian Patrick Moran. The South still had plenty of Liverpool friends, led by
James Dunwoody Bulloch. Shenandoah's 130 crew surrendered, was arrested and released. Shenandoah looked shabby from having been at sea so long, but within days she was smartened up. Patrick Moran says: "My great grandfather was a boy living in Yates Street, in Dingle, near to Shenandoah's berth. He and a friend went to
have a look and got aboard, but were apprehended by the chief petty officer. Soon the chief officer was on the scene and, mindful of good public relations, noted that the boys must be from 'respectable families' as they were 'wearing boots'. He gave them the full tour and sent them on their way."
-SOURCE-
