Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[409] on board a Confederate cruiser. This was done to avoid a breach of the British Foreign Enlistment Act. They had, of course, been undeceived from the day of our departure from Liverpool. They knew that they were to be released from the contracts they had made, but I could not know how many of them would engage with me for the Alabama. It is true I had had a talk with some of the leaders of the crew, who had promised to go with me, and to influence others, but no creature can be more whimsical than a sailor, until you have bound him past recall, unless indeed it be a woman.

The ship having been properly prepared, we steamed out, on this bright Sunday morning, under a cloudless sky, with a gentle breeze from the southeast, scarcely ruffling the surface of the placid sea, and under the shadow of the smiling and picturesque island of Terceira, which nature seemed to have decked specially for the occasion, so charming did it appear, in its checkered dress of a lighter and darker green, composed of corn-fields and orange-groves, the flag of the new-born Confederate States was unfurled, for the first time, from the peak of the Alabama. The Bahama accompanied us. The ceremony was short but impressive. The officers were all in full uniform, and the crew neatly dressed, and I caused ‘all hands’ to be summoned aft on the quarter-deck, and mounting a guncarriage, I read the commission of Mr. Jefferson Davis, appointing me a captain in the Confederate States Navy, and the order of Mr. Stephen R. Mallory, the Secretary of the Navy, directing me to assume command of the Alabama. Following my example, the officers and crew had all uncovered their heads, in deference to the sovereign authority, as is customary on such occasions; and as they stood in respectful silence and listened with rapt attention to the reading, and to the short explanation of my object and purposes, in putting the ship in commission which followed, I was deeply impressed with the spectacle. Virginia, the grand old mother of many of the States, who afterward died so nobly; South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, were all represented in the persons of my officers, and I had some of as fine specimens of the daring and adventurous seaman, as any ship of war could boast.

While the reading was going on, two small balls might