The Confederate ship Alabama was the most successful merchant raider of the CiViL War. Shortly after his arrival in England, Confederate naval agent James D. Bulloch contracted with the Liverpool firm of Laird & Sons to construct a fast and capable bark-rigged sloop intended for raiding. The resulting vessel, officially known as “290,” was launched and christened Enrica on May 15, 1862, and it slipped away to sea on July 30, before U. S. diplomats in London could prevent it from sailing. Enrica dropped anchor off the Portuguese island of Terceira, in the Azores, where it was armed and on August 24, 1862, commissioned CSS Alabama under Captain Raphael Semmes.
The Alabama was 220 feet long, measured 31 feet at the beam, and displaced 1,050 tons, making it one of the sleekest warships in its class. It was fitted with a battery of six 32-pounder cannons in broadside and carried a 110-pound rifled Blakely cannon and a 68-pounder smoothbore on pivot mounts amidships. The Alabama was manned by a crew of 120 sailors and 24 officers and was specially outfitted for long-distance cruising. The vessel could reach 14 knots with its 300-horsepower steam engine, but it more routinely sailed at 10 knots under a generous spread of canvas. In sum, the Alabama was well suited for fast raids against slower Union merchant vessels and could usually outpace the slower, heavier warships sent to intercept it.
Semmes sailed from the Azores in August 1862 and began accosting Union merchant ships in their local waters and off Newfoundland. He went on to the Caribbean for additional prizes, then entered the Gulf of Mexico. There, on January 11, 1863, the Alabama sank the smaller Union warship Hatteras in a 15-minute engagement. As the U. S. Navy stepped up it efforts to stop the hard-hitting Confederate raider, Semmes shifted his operations to the coast of South America before crossing the Atlantic to the coast of South Africa and the Indian Ocean. By this time merchant ships owned by Northerners were becoming harder to find, because sea captains, having been warned of his presence, remained in neutral ports.
After less than two years of service at sea, the raider had traveled 75,000 miles and captured 66 prizes whose value totaled $6.5 million. Semmes decided that the Alabama was overdue for repairs, and in June 1864 he sailed to Cherbourg, France, to commission the work; however, French authorities, mindful of their commitment to neutrality, refused him access to the local shipyard. Semmes was further discomfited when the USS Kearsarge stationed itself off the harbor. On June 11, 1864, with his vessel in less than fighting condition and his gunpowder weakened by continuous exposure to salt air, Semmes sortied to meet the Union warship. The Kearsarge, expertly commanded by Captain John Winslow, riddled the Alabama in a contest of circling turns, and it sank with a loss of nine killed and 24 wounded. Semmes and several other officers eluded capture thanks to a rescue by the English yacht Greyhound, but the career of the South’s most successful warship had ended.
Further reading: Andrew Bowcock, CSS Alabama: Anatomy of a Confederate Raider (London: Chatham, 2002); Stephen R. Fox, Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007); James Gindlesperger, Fire on the Water: The USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama (Ship-pensburg, Pa.: Burd Street Press, 2003); Arthur Sinclair, The Year of the Alabama (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003).
—John C. Fredriksen
Alexander, Edward P. (1835-1910) author, Confederate general
Confederate general and author Edward Porter Alexander was born on May 26, 1835, on the Fairfield plantation in Wilkes County, Georgia. His wealthy parents, Adam and Sarah Alexander, demanded academic excellence from their 10 children and were disappointed that Alexander decided to become a soldier. Graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1857, he stood third in his class and accepted a coveted commission in the engineer corps. He married Virginian Bettie Mason shortly thereafter.
Following Georgia’s secession in 1861, Alexander left the U. S. Army and put his considerable engineering and organizational skills to work for the Confederacy. Commissioned as an artillery captain, he joined Gen. P. G. T.
Beauregard’s staff before the First Battle of Bull Run and quickly became chief of ordinance and artillery. Appointed colonel of artillery in Gen. James Longstreet’s First Corps in 1862, Alexander saw significant action at the Battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. During the latter, he directed the artillery bombardment that preceded Pickett’s Charge. Promoted to brigadier general in 1864, he spent the remainder of the war as Longstreet’s chief of artillery. After recovering from a minor wound suffered at Petersburg in June 1864, Alexander rejoined the army for its final retreat and surrender in 1865.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Alexander built a postwar career as a railroad executive, managing several Georgia lines while mostly steering clear of the railroad industry financial scandals that in 1892 forced his retirement. In 1897 President Grover Cleveland appointed Alexander to a lucrative post as the American engineer responsible for settling a border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Alexander published Military Memoirs of a Confederate in 1907. Years earlier he had contributed narratives based on his personal experiences to the Southern Historical Society Papers and Century Magazine’s “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War” series. In his later memoirs, Alexander evaluated the campaigns he had witnessed in strictly military terms, adopting a scholarly approach that former compatriots mistook for arrogance. His harsh analysis of the Gettysburg campaign condemned Gen. Robert E. Lee’s decision to invade Pennsylvania, criticized Lee’s use of offensive battle tactics, and acquitted Longstreet of blame for the Confederate loss.
Alexander died on April 27, 1910, in Savannah, Georgia.
See also tactics and strategy.
Further reading: Edward Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (Dayton, Ohio: Morningside Bookshop, 1977); Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Maury Klein, Edward Porter Alexander (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971).
—Amy J. Kinsel
World History
