![]() Sent home to recuperate, Winslow did not return to duty until the summer of 1862. “It was a great mercy that the bolt did not strike me on the body,” he wrote home, “as it would have made an end of me.” As Winslow attempted to winch her off, a link of chain parted with such force that one shard flew 500 feet another struck him in the left arm, tearing away much of the muscle. On his first venture downstream, commanding the flagship Benton, she grounded on a sandbar 30 miles south of St. It is doubtful whether we can get down the river, on account of the draft of water, without first taking out the guns.” ![]() He had not been confident of the outcome: “Our gunboats are heavy. Winslow, a North Carolina-born Unionist, had been assigned to the Western Gunboat Flotilla at Cincinnati, intended to sail down the Ohio and wrest control of the Mississippi. ![]() While Semmes sailed off to seek glory, a former fellow officer was languishing in the backwaters of the naval war. “The Alabama will be a fine ship, quite equal to encounter any of the enemy’s steam-sloops,” their captain recorded in his log, “and I shall feel much more independent in her, upon the high seas, than I did in the little Sumter.” John Winslow: Commander of the Kearsage The aft 8-inch smoothbore fired a 68-pound shot or 42-pound shell the forward 7-inch rifle fired a longer 100-pound shot or 85-pound shell.Īlabama’s executive officer, Lieutenant John McIntosh Kell, had signed 80 new hands to join the veteran sailors of Semmes’ previous command, the cruiser Sumter. Designed by Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely of the British Army, with cast iron barrels and breeches wrapped in wrought iron or steel bands, they were so heavy that they had to be mounted directly amidships for proper sea keeping and manhandled on a complex system of pivots and tracks to one side or the other prior to battle. Her six 6.4-inch, 32-pounder smoothbores were dwarfed by her two main guns. Unlike a Napoleonic-era man-of-war, which mounted more than 50 guns per side, Alabama totaled just eight. On the other hand, when I desired to use her as a steamer, I had only to start the fires, lower the propeller, and if the wind was adverse, brace her yards to the wind, and the conversion was complete.” When this was done, and her sails spread, she was, to all intents and purposes, a sailing ship. “The Alabama was so constructed, that in fifteen minutes, her propeller could be detached from the shaft, and lifted in a well contrived for the purpose, sufficiently high out of the water, not to be an impediment to her speed. “She was a perfect steamer and a perfect sailing ship, at the same time,” marveled Semmes. With two 300-horsepower steam engines driving a single two-bladed screw, she could make 13 knots. Any of you that thinks he cannot stand to his gun, I do not want.” “The Alabama Will be a Fine Ship”Ĭovertly financed through the sale of Southern cotton and built at the famous Laird Shipyard on the Mersey River near Liverpool, Alabama was a wood-hulled, bark-rigged (foremasts rigged square, mizzenmast fore and aft), 220-foot sloop of 1,050 tons. Your prize money will be divided proportionately. We are going to burn, sink and destroy the commerce of the United States. There is a chance that seldom offers itself to a British seaman, that is, to make a little money. “She is as fine a vessel as ever floated. “Now, my lads, there is the ship,” said the captain. A band played “Dixie” as Semmes read aloud his commission from President Jefferson Davis and the Stars and Bars were run up the mainmast. On August 24, 1862, newly promoted Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate States Navy called his largely English crew to the quarterdeck of his new command, the 220-foot battle cruiser Alabama, lying off the coast of Terceira in the Azores.
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