Aug. 5, 1864. |
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informed of the end of the Rebellion,1 by an English bark, when, contrary to the wishes of the ship's company, Waddell proceeded with his vessel to England, and delivered her as a prize to the British national vessel Donegal, in the harbor of Liverpool.2 according to the historian of the cruise, the object of Waddell was sordid and dishonorable, and he enriched himself at the expense of his companions.
By a ruling of the British authorities, all of the men of the Shenandoah, not British subjects, were released, and this covered nearly the whole, for almost every man, however much his speech betrayed him, eagerly, on that occasion, claimed to be a native born or adopted citizen of the United States.3
soon after the destruction of the Alabama, measures were taken for further diminishing the aid continually given to the Confederates through British vessels, by closing against the blockade-runners the ports of Mobile and Wilmington, the only ones now remaining open to them.
These, having double entrances, made it difficult for blockading squadrons to prevent the swift, light-draft vessels used for running the blockade,4 from slipping in with valuable cargoes of needful supplies, and slipping out again with equally valuable cargoes of cotton for the use of England's mills.
it was resolved to seal up the Port of Mobile first, and for that purpose, Admiral Farragut appeared
off the entrance of Mobile Bay, full thirty miles below the City, with a fleet of eighteen vessels, four of them iron-clad,5 while a land force, about five thousand strong, sent by General Canby from New Orleans, under General Gordon Granger, was planted upon Dauphin Island for the purpose of co-operating.
the entrance to Mobile Bay is divided by Dauphin Island, making two passages; the easterly one four miles wide and Twenty-five feet deep in the channel.
The other, known as Grant's Pass, was a very narrow passage, between two little islands, and not more than five or six feet deep at low
1 before the raid on the whaling fleet, a San Francisco newspaper had reached the Shenandoah, with news of the surrender of Lee and Johnston, and the end of the War, but he did not choose to consider it authentic, “coming from the enemy.”
2 one of the pirates, an officer of the Shenandoah, named Cornelius E. Hunt, wrote a history of the cruise of the Shenandoah, from which this brief sketch has been chiefly compiled. He says when they were informed of the close of the War, each man felt himself a proper subject for the wrath of his outraged Government. “it had been three months,” he says, “since hostilities ceased, leaving us without a flag or a country; and during that time we had been actively engaged in preying upon the commerce of a Government that not only claimed our allegiance, but had made good her claim by the wager of battle.” under these circumstances, Captain Waddell was solicited by a written petition of the ship's company, to proceed to Sydney, Australia, there abandon the ship to the British authorities, and let each man look out for his personal safety. He deceived them with professions of acquiescence, but steered for England.
the same writer complains of the coldness with which these corsairs were received in England. “the journals,” he said, “once most clamorous for our cause, were the first to bestow upon us the epithet of ‘pirates.’ so much for the disinterested friendship of great Britain. As long as their workshops were busy turning out arms and munitions of War for our armies in the field, and blockade-runners from Southern ports were arriving at Liverpool and London, laden with the coveted cotton, they were loud in their protestations of sympathy and friendship; but when the hour of adversity came-when there was nothing more to be made out of us, these fair-weather friends wholly ignored our existence.”3 during her cruise, in which she circumnavigated the globe, the Shenandoah captured thirty vessels, whose aggregate value was $1,854,958.
4 see page 812, volume II.
5 the wooden vessels were the Hartford (flag-ship), Captain P. Drayton; Brooklyn, Captain James Alden; Metacomet, Lieutenant-Commander J. E. Jonett; Octorara, Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Green; Richmond, Captain T. A. Jenkins; Lackawanna, Captain J. B. Marchand; Monongahela, Commander J. H. Strong; Ossi. Pee, Commander W. E. Leroy; Oneida, Commander J. R. M. Mullaney; Port Royal, Lieutenant-Commander B. Gherarde; Seminole, Commander E. Donaldson; Kennebeck, Lieutenant-Commander W. P. McCann; Itasca, Lieutenant-Commander George Brown, and Galena, Lieutenant-Commander C. H. Wells. The ironclad vessels were the Tecumseh, Commander T. A. M. Craven; Manhattan, Commander T. W. A. Nicholson; Winnebago, Commander T. H. Stevens, and Chickasaw, Lieutenant-Commander T. H. Perkins.
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