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| After the most famous sea-fight of the war captain Winslow and his officers on the “Kearsarge” Here on the deck of the “Kearsarge” stand Captain John A. Winslow (third from left) and his officers after their return from the victorious battle with the “Alabama.” On Sunday morning, June 19, 1864, Captain Winslow, who had been lying off the harbor of Cherbourg waiting for the Confederate cruiser to come out, was conducting divine service. Suddenly a cry--“She's coming, and heading straight for us” --rang out on the deck. Laying down his prayer-book and seizing his speaking-trumpet, Winslow ordered his ship cleared for action. He stood out to sea to make sure that the fight would occur beyond the neutrality limit. Meanwhile, people were crowding to every vantage-point along the coast with spy-glasses and camp-chairs, eager to witness the only great fight on the high seas between a Federal and a Confederate cruiser. The two ships were almost precisely matched in tonnage, number of men, and shot-weight of the guns brought into action on each side. The battle was begun by the “Alabama” at a range of 1,200 yards. The “Kearsarge,” however, soon closed in to 900 yards, training her guns for more than an hour upon the “Alabama” with telling effect. Precisely an hour and thirteen minutes after the “Alabama” fired her first broadside, her colors were hauled down from her masthead; the 11-inch shells of the pivot-guns of the “Kearsarge” had pierced her again and again below the water-line; twenty-six of her men were killed and drowned and twenty-one wounded, while aboard the “Kearsarge” only three men were injured. Twenty minutes after the surrender the “Alabama” settled by the stern and sank. Some survivors escaped on the British steam-yacht “Deerhound.” |
