Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

The two vessels, instead of coming to close quarters, resorted to a curious maneuver-fighting in a circle, and steaming around a common centre. The distance between them varied from a quarter to half a mile. The Alabama fired alternately with shot and shell; her guns were admirably worked; but strange to say, the Kearsarge showed no sign of material damage, when, after more than an hour's fire, Capt. Semmes ascertained that his own vessel was in a sinking condition, large apertures having been made in her sides and between decks. He now turned his vessel towards the French coast, hoping to reach it under a full head of steam and a crowd of sail. It was too late; the ship was evidently doomed; the fires were extinguished in the furnaces; and when the Kearsarge, which pursued her, was four hundred yards distant, Capt. Semmes hauled down his colours, and prepared to surrender. His vessel was evidently settling under him, and he looked with anxiety to the Kearsarge for her boats to put out to receive the surrender and rescue her prisoners from the fate of drowning. No boat came. Instead of despatching relief, the Kearsarge fired five times upon the Alabama after her colours had been struck. “It is charitable to suppose,” says Capt. Semmes, “that a ship of war of a Christian nation could not have done this intentionally.” But there is another explanation of this act. It has since become known to the world that in a certain diplomatic letter from Secretary Seward on questions growing out of this battle, he has taken the position that the Federal vessel had choice of a capture of prisoners, or “of sinking the crew of the pirate!”

It appeared that nothing but a watery grave awaited the officers and crew of the Alabama. As the vessel was on the point of sinking, the unhappy and desperate men leaped overboard, and the waves were soon filled with drowning men. Happily an English yacht, the Deerhound, was upon the scene, and having been allowed by the Kearsarge to go to the rescue, steamed up in the midst of the drowning men, and rescued most of them from the water. Capt. Semmes was taken by the Deerhound's boat from the water, as he was sinking for the last time. He turned his face to the rescuing party, and said: “I am Capt. Semmes-save me.” He was eagerly taken aboard when his rank was thus known, and, being covered with a tarpaulin, he was carried to the English yacht, directly under the guns of the Kearsarge, without attracting any attention from the vessel.

The loss of the Alabama, in killed and wounded, was thirty; and on the Kearsarge not a single life had been lost. But there was another inequality of results of much more curious interest. The hull of t]he Alabama had been fearfully opened by the enemy's shot and shell, and yet the Kearsarge, after the contest, showed such little evidence of serious damage, that it did not appear even necessary for her to come into port to repair.