Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[438] British Government was bound to make full indemnity for all losses caused by the destructive acts of the Alabama.¹

it seems proper to record here, in anticipation of other transactions of the War, the prominent events in the career of the last of the Confederate pirate ships, and which performed the last acts of hostility against the Republic. She was the Shenandoah, a Clyde (Scotland) built vessel, long and rakish, of seven hundred and ninety tons burden, with an auxiliary engine of two hundred and Twenty nominal horse power, and capable of an average speed of ten knots an hour.

the Shenandoah was originally the sea-king. she left London with that name early in October, 1864, as an East Indiaman, armed with two guns, as usual, land cleared for Bombay. A steamer, named Laurel, took from Liverpool a lot of “Southern gentlemen” (as the historian of the Shenandoah's cruise called them), who had been in the Sumter, Alabama, and Georgia, with an armament and a crew of Englishmen, all of which were transferred to the sea-king at Madeira, when she was named Shenandoah. her Captain was James I. Waddell, who was regularly commissioned by Mallory. He addressed the crew, who were ignorant of their destination until then, and informed them of the character and purpose of the Shenandoah, where-upon only Twenty-three of the eighty men were found willing to become pirates and take the risks of the perilous profession. The remainder returned to Liverpool in the Laurel.

the Shenandoah sailed from Madeira to the Southern Ocean, plundering and destroying American vessels whenever opportunity to do so was offered. At Melbourne, Australia, her officers were received with great enthusiasm, and were entertained with receptions, dinners, and balls; and free tickets were given them for travel on the Hobson Bay railroad. Just before they left, these “gentlemen” indulged in a drunken frolic, and a disgraceful fight with some of the citizens. Then the Shenandoah cruised in the India seas and up the eastern coast of Asia to the Ochosk sea and Behring's Straits,

June, 1865.

to plunder and destroy the New England whaling fleet on the borders of the frozen Arctic Ocean. There she made havoc among the whalers, and lighted up the ice-floes of the Polar sea with incendiary fires. On the 28th of June, she appeared at a convention of whaling ships in that region,² bearing the American flag, and exciting no suspicions of her character, when she suddenly revealed her mission, and before five o'clock that evening, she had made prizes of ten whale ships, of which eight were set on fire and burned in a group before midnight. “it was an ill-omened day for them and the insurance offices in New Bedford,” said the historian of her cruise. This was the last act in the horrid drama of the Civil War.

on the 2d of August the Commander of the Shenandoah was satisfactorily