Mason: “[We will] never . . . see her again, most probably, for we are bound on a cruise, which will last until the end of the war, provided, of course, we are not sunk in the meantime.” Mason superintended crewmen on the forecastle securing the anchor for sea under the eye of a lieutenant. It was his first watch on Shenandoah but “it was not the last, I’m happy to say.”15
A little before sundown the Confederate flag was raised—unnoticed, wrote Lining, by all except himself and the officer on deck. “We with our small crew, willing, however, to suffer & do all we could . . . started off on our cruise, our only trust being in a just God, and in our cause.” Having discharged the Portuguese fishermen (who were nearly swamped astern by the screw wake), Shenandoah stood clear of the land to the southwest. About 9 p.m., the engine was stopped, boiler fires banked, and topsails set. The doctor went to bed directly after supper, more tired, he thought, than ever in his life. The Confederate ensign flying at the peak was the second national pattern with the familiar battle flag for the canton and a pure white field.
Captain Waddell’s thoughts that evening of 19 October 1864 were not recorded. In a postwar report to posterity, he sounded more confident (and more poetic) than he undoubtedly felt at the time:
And the little adventurer entered upon her new career, throwing out to the breeze the flag of the South, and demanded a place upon that vast ocean of water without fear or favor. That flag unfolded itself gracefully to the freshening breeze, and declared the majesty of the country it represented amid the cheers of a handful of brave-hearted men, and she dashed upon her native element as if more than equal to the contest, cheered on by acclamations from Laurel, which was steaming away for the land we love, to tell the tale to those who would rejoice that another Confederate cruiser was afloat.
At almost the same moment and an ocean away, as autumn blazed the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, General Philip Sheridan routed Confederates under Jubal Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek, a bloody ending to the Second Valley Campaign. This beautiful breadbasket of the South was securely in Union hands. Grant had instructed Sheridan that the valley be made such a waste that, to fly over it, a crow would have to carry rations. By spring Sheridan’s troops would denude the area of crops, livestock, and farm buildings; residents would be starving. The very day that lost one Shenandoah to the Confederacy saw the birth of another. The new warship honored the place, recalled Lieutenant Whittle, “where the brave Stonewall Jackson always so discomfited the enemy. The burning there of homes over defenseless women and children made the selection of the name not inappropriate for a cruiser, which was to lead a torchlight procession around the world and into every ocean.”16
For these Southerners, the ship symbolized the future in their determination to emulate her famous sisters and to achieve retribution, victory, and peace. The cruise would be the subject of history “successful or not,” concluded Lieutenant Grimball. But the CSS Shenandoah was not a man-of-war yet—dangerously undermanned, guns not mounted, chaos on deck and below, an untested foreign crew, vulnerable to both the enemy and the weather, she sallied forth into the Atlantic with more hope than substance.
“Do . . . the Greatest Injury”
Fifteen months before Shenandoah’s commissioning—18 August 1863—a notice appeared in the North British Daily Mail: “Messrs. A. Stephen & Sons launched from their new shipbuilding shed at Kelvinhaugh, another of their wood and iron ships.” The Sea King was described as a fine screw steamship of about 1,200 tons, certified class A1 at Lloyd’s of London. She was the first clipper ship with iron frames and wooden planking (called a composite ship), and also the first steamer specially constructed to compete with “the fastest ships in the trade direct from China to London, in bringing home the first teas of the season.” Confederate commander James Bulloch and Lieutenant Robert Carter had been searching the north bank of the River Clyde for a steamer to purchase when they noticed Sea King in the bustle of fitting out for her first commercial voyage. She appeared to be just what they were looking for, but they got only a quick look. Sea King also caught the attention of retired police detective Matthew Maguire working for the energetic American consul in Liverpool, Thomas H. Dudley. He reported her as a potential rebel raider needing close observation.1
Georgian James Dunwoody Bulloch was forty years old, a former U.S. Navy officer, merchant master, and businessman with extensive experience, formidable organizing talents, and fierce determination. He served as chief purchasing agent in England for the Confederate navy department from his headquarters in the pro-Southern shipping and shipbuilding city of Liverpool, where, a contemporary opined, more Confederate flags flew than in Richmond. Bulloch’s half brother, Irvine Stephens Bulloch, was sailing master on Shenandoah. (The Bullochs’ sister, Martha, married Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and bore the future president.)
Reporting directly to Confederate secretary of the navy Stephen Mallory, James Bulloch accomplished more than any other Confederate on foreign soil. Against persistent Union espionage and intense diplomatic pressure, he launched the most successful raiders—Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah—along with blockade runners crammed with hundreds of tons of arms and equipment. He contracted the Laird Shipyards to build two iron-hulled steam warships, each with an iron beak—the “Laird rams.” Bulloch had been slated to command Alabama but reluctantly relinquished the position upon request of Mallory, who considered him indispensable in his current position. U.S. minister to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams wrote that Bulloch and associates were more effectively directing hostile operations than if they had been in Richmond. “In other words, so far as the naval branch of warfare is concerned, the real bureau was fixed at Liverpool.” But Mallory, an experienced maritime lawyer from Key West, Florida, played a vital role as arguably the most effective of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet officers. Mallory served before the war as U.S. senator and chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs where he was a vigorous proponent of naval modernization. Davis, whose talents and interests lay almost exclusively in military affairs, left the navy to Mallory.2
Early in 1861 Raphael Semmes had advised a prominent Southerner, “If you are warred upon at all, it will be by a commercial people, whose ability to do you harm will consist chiefly in ships, and shipping. It is at ships and shipping, therefore, that you must strike. . . . Private cupidity will always furnish the means for this description of warfare.” It would be required, maintained Semmes, only to place licensed privateers under sufficient legal constraint to prevent degeneration into abuse and piracy. Even New England ships and New England capital would serve the Confederacy for profit. Privateering would be analogous to the militia system on land.3
The Confederate congress duly authorized privateers, and in response President Lincoln threatened to license his own but did not carry it out. There were virtually no Southern merchant ships on the seas to capture, and Lincoln needed every available vessel to blockade their harbors. A few rebel privateers made it to sea in 1861 with short-lived success. Europeans denied both sides permission to bring captured vessels into neutral ports for adjudication and sale, while the blockade increasingly restricted Southern harbors. For the first time in three hundred years, the business was not profitable.4
Mallory was an innovator, as demonstrated in his adoption of ironclad warships and torpedoes (mines). So, he determined to buy or build vessels configured solely for commerce destruction and fund them from the treasury. Florida and Alabama had been prototypes, built from the keel up and magnificently suited for the purpose. But starting with Raphael Semmes’ little Sumter in 1861,
