CHAPTER XLVIII

THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS

From the beginning of the war the Federals had enjoyed the very great advantage of having possession of a navy, and of shipyards in which that navy could be increased almost at will, while the Confederates had neither ships nor shipyards. On the Federal side it was easily possible to increase the naval force by drawing into the service available vessels of every kind--steamers, merchantmen, tugs, and even double-ender ferry boats from New York Harbor. The guns with which to arm these vessels were at hand, and they were quickly made ready for service by slight alterations which the shipbuilders of the North were prepared to make at exceedingly short notice. On the Southern side there was next to nothing in this way. For a time the Norfolk navy yard was in the possession of the Confederates, and as we have seen in a former chapter they availed themselves of its working resources so far as to prepare the _Merrimac_ or _Virginia_, and send her out into Hampton Roads, upon her mission of destruction. But presently a change in the military situation made it necessary for them to blow up that ironclad ship, and they had no means of providing another to take her place. At Charleston two or three ironclad gunboats were constructed, together with several torpedo boats that did more or less execution; but so inadequate were the means of construction on the southern side that these boats accomplished very little. On the Mississippi some rams were created out of old hulks, which did some execution, but which were speedily destroyed.

On the open sea the Confederacy had no ships of its own afloat, except the _Sumter_, a sailing craft heavily sparred, and commanded by Raphael Semmes, perhaps the most expert sailor and daring fighter among all the men who had resigned from the Federal navy to engage in the Confederate service. That ship, daringly commanded and daringly maneuvered, wrought havoc for a time in the early part of the war, but the days of her usefulness as against steam craft were easily numbered.

Somewhat later a steam vessel, the _Alabama_, was built at Birkenhead in England for the use of Captain Semmes and his daring crew. She was a little thing, only 220 feet long, and built of wood with no protection whatever against an enemy's fire. But she was fleeter than any ship in the American navy, and it was hoped by the Confederates that she might destroy the commerce of the United States upon the high seas without herself meeting with destruction. In spite of the protests of the American minister in London, this ship, all unarmed, was permitted to escape to sea, and at Fayal in the Azores her cannon and coal were put on board of her.

For nearly two years she made herself a terror to American merchantmen, and was the despair of the American navy, which had no ship capable of steaming one half so fast as she could do. In effect she swept American commerce from the seas, not so much by her captures of American merchantmen as by her perpetual threat of capture which rendered it a bad speculation for any American merchant to send a ship to sea, and thus subject her to the possibility of capture by the _Alabama_.

In June, 1864, the _Alabama_ put into the harbor of Cherbourg, France. The _Kearsarge_, a United States war vessel under command of John A. Winslow, lay off the harbor, waiting for the _Alabama_ to come out. The one vessel could not attack the other in a neutral port, or within three miles of the shore. But when the _Alabama_ steamed out to a distance of perhaps eight miles, she was assailed by the _Kearsarge_, and a fierce battle ensued. The two ships were substantially the same in size, but the _Kearsarge_ was a chain protected vessel, stronger in every way than her Confederate adversary, and on that Sunday morning of June nineteenth, 1864, she made short work of the Confederate cruiser. The _Alabama_ was quickly riddled, and went down stern foremost. Many of her crew went down with her and perished in the sea. The remainder of them were picked up by a British yacht and carried in safety to England.

There were other Confederate cruisers like unto the _Alabama_, including the _Shenandoah_, the _Florida_, the _Tallahassee_, the _Tacony_, and the _Georgia_. These ships largely aided in that destruction of American commerce in which the _Alabama_ had taken the lead. But none of them had so picturesque a career as was that of the _Alabama_, while the careers of all of them are fitly represented by that of Admiral Semmes's ship.

The destructive activities of these ships were afterwards made the subject of an international arbitration, and Great Britain was condemned to pay to the United States an indemnity of $15,500,000 for her neglect of international comity in permitting them to sail from her ports.