in international law as the first Confederate ship of war to fly the flag in British waters and the first to make a capture in North Atlantic shipping lanes. Warmly received in Southampton, Nashville secured belligerent status for Confederate warships in the face of vociferous Union protests and proved the safety of British ports. Based on his experience in both navies, Whittle came to believe that he was just as qualified to command Shenandoah, a feeling reinforced by Waddell’s apparent hesitance. His commander seemed to represent the past, to underappreciate his subordinates, and to be ill equipped for challenges of present and future.5
In his journal, Charles Lining would contribute observations from the sidelines, many critical of the captain. In August 1858 Lining had sailed as assistant surgeon with the sloop of war USS Cyane around the tip of South America to the Pacific, returning in late 1860. The long cruise of the unhappy Cyane was a microcosm of stresses afflicting the officer corps at midcentury. The doctor witnessed close at hand a great deal of drunkenness, lack of discipline, and feuding among officers, which upon their return resulted in numerous courts of inquiry; nearly every officer was court-martialed, including the captain. Much of the dissension could be traced to dissatisfaction over prospects for promotion.6
That experience would color Lining’s perceptions during this voyage. His medical duties were not demanding; he had no direct role in the operations of the ship and he was often bored. At thirty years of age, Lining was between the lieutenants and the captain. Because of his professional and social status and his position outside the chain of command, young officers could turn to him to vent frustrations or ask advice. At least some of them—notably First Lieutenant Whittle—talked to him openly of their differences with the captain. The doctor participated actively in these discussions, took sides, and offered opinions that had nothing to do with medicine.
One issue concerned the capabilities of the four watchstanding lieutenants. In order of seniority, they were John Grimball of South Carolina; Sidney Smith Lee Jr., another Virginian; Francis Thornton Chew of Missouri; and Dabney Minor Scales from Mississippi—all under the age of twenty-five. Grimball and Lee had the experience to stand as officer of the deck, supervising the highly specialized and frequently dangerous business of sailing a large, deepwater ship. Grimball was the privileged son of a wealthy Charleston planter, state senator, and signer of the South Carolina secession proclamation. He graduated from the Naval Academy with Whittle in 1858 and served afloat in the U.S. Navy before the war.7
Sidney Smith Lee Jr. was the nephew of Robert E. Lee, brother of Confederate general and future Virginia governor Fitzhugh Lee, and great-grandson of George Mason, one of the founding fathers (and also cousin to Midshipman Mason). Like the senior Whittle, Lee’s father served the U.S. Navy for many years before becoming a ranked captain for the South. His son did not immediately choose a Navy career but went to sea and gained considerable experience in the prewar merchant service. These officers were supported by the experienced and capable sailing master Irvine Bulloch, warrant officer in charge of navigation (and younger half brother to Commander James Bulloch). Irvine Bulloch had served in Alabama and was credited with firing the last shot as she began to go under.
Francis Chew was an anomaly: a middle-class Midwesterner and a pharmacy clerk from Richmond, Missouri, who joined the U.S. Navy over the objections of his widowed mother after reading a novel about Matthew C. Perry’s expedition to Japan. “It was beautifully and profusely illustrated, my head was completely turned and I concluded that the Navy was just the place for me. Drugs lost all their charms; ships, sailors, officers in their showy uniforms, filled my mind with new thoughts and an earnest longing for the sea.” Through acquaintance with a judge, Chew secured appointment to the Naval Academy, entering in 1859; Dabney Scales, the son of a Mississippi planter, also entered the Naval Academy in 1859—in spring 1861 both resigned without graduating to join the Confederate navy.
All of these men had significant wartime experience on ironclads and shallow-water steam gunboats: In the fall of 1861, Chew and Scales served in the “mosquito fleet” at the loss of Port Royal Sound, South Carolina; Chew observed the fall of Fort Pulaski two months later; Waddell had been on one of the Confederacy’s doomed ironclads at the Battle of New Orleans in April 1862, while Whittle, Lee, and Chew were together on another; that same month on the Mississippi, Dr. Lining witnessed the fall of Island Number Ten and New Madrid, Missouri. A few weeks later, Waddell supervised the big guns at Drewry’s Bluff on the James River when they turned back the Union fleet threatening Richmond.
Grimball and Scales had close calls on the bloody gun deck of the ironclad CSS Arkansas in July 1862 when she charged guns blazing through Admiral Farragut’s fleet above Vicksburg. And in April 1863, Chew was on board the ironclad CSS Palmetto State as they stopped a Union waterborne attack on Charleston. Scales and Lee reported to the ironclad CSS Atlanta in Savannah, which in June 1863 ran aground after a short fight and was captured by Union monitors. By the summer of 1863, future Shenandoah lieutenants all had been dispatched to Europe awaiting orders as part of a Confederate fleet that never was. Chew and Scales, however, had never been to sea, which made Waddell particularly uncomfortable. Whittle, who felt perfectly capable of mentoring his junior colleagues, would become incensed when the captain’s nervousness on the subject impugned his competence.
Now in the isolated and confined embrace of a ship so far from home, these men were settling into a web of formal and informal relationships that would define the effectiveness of the command—its ability to meet the enemy and the weather and not only to survive but to prevail in the mission. Meanwhile, work continued apace: the sailmaker prepared and fitted canvas hoods for the hatches, while engineers distilled freshwater—one of the revolutionary advantages of steam on long voyages. They could produce five hundred gallons a day, but this required a significant expenditure of coal. The captain instructed that the name Sea King be erased from the stern. Lining observed the Island of Palmas in the Canaries from fifty miles off and saw flying fish for the first time, a sign that they were approaching the tropics. He had worked harder than ever in his life; it had been a difficult time, but not an unhappy one.
Another vessel appeared, clearly Yankee built, which, when stopped and questioned, proved to be under British registry and could not be detained. “Better luck next time,” wrote Whittle, who was subject to his own melancholy, in what would become a typical journal entry: “Notwithstanding my being so busy, I have time to feel blue, as I can’t get my usual letters from my own dear ones. Oh! how much would I give to know how they are. I leave them and all to God. We have so much to be thankful for.” With occasional heavy rain and violent squalls of wind, waves crashed against the sides; decks and hull seams leaked like sieves, admitting a fine spray into berth deck and cabin.
The captain was, however, impressed with his new command as they met and passed other ships. “Shenandoah was unquestionably a fast vessel, and I felt assured it would be a difficult matter to find her superior under canvas.” Three times the Confederates dipped their ensign in salute to passing English vessels, which responded in turn—a sign of respect and friendship between nations (now as then); coming from representatives of the most powerful nation on earth, it was particularly gratifying. Waddell noted, “Our prospects brightened as she worked her way toward the line [equator] through light and variable winds, sunshine, and rain.”
On 28 October 1864, due south of the Azores and west of Dakar in the afternoon, a vessel broke the horizon ahead. Experienced sailors could guess a ship’s nationality from the contours of sails, masts and spars, and lines of hull. U.S. vessels—widely recognized as among the best—generally carried taller and narrower rigs with cotton sails in place of the grayer flax canvas preferred by Europeans. Raphael Semmes described similar encounters, praising the “whitest of cotton sails, glistening in the . . . sun,” “well-turned, flaring bows,” “grace and beauty of hull,” and “long, tapering spars” on which American shipbuilders and masters prided themselves. For some lookouts, it was almost a matter of instinct and a glance of a minute or two: this vessel was a Yankee.8
Shenandoah
