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Just as Americans occasionally find themselves humming, "I’ve come from Alabama (wid my banjo on my knee.”) without thinking about the meaning of the words, some descendents of South Africa’s Boers still sing or whistle "Daar Kom Die Alabama”—' Here Comes the Alabama.”
During her 21-month globe-girdling career, the Confederate cruiser Alabama took more than 60 prizes valued at close to $6,000,000.
"Hull 290” was built in Liverpool as a sloop of war and launched as the Enrica 29 July 1862. She was commandeered by Captain Raphael Semmes and taken to the Azores where she was fitted out as a cruiser and commissioned at sea as the Alabama on 24 August.
Her new skipper gave the 90 men present a fight talk urging them to sign on as crew. The alternative was to return to England. Eighty, mostly Englishmen, stayed. Semmes in his own words described his managerial technique for shipboard life thus:
The Confederate man-of-war Alabama thus began her "guerre de course.” Her skipper vehemently denied the sobriquet placed on her of a "British Pirate.’ She captured and burned Union ships, from whaling vessels near the Azores to merchant shipping in the Caribbean. She engaged Union ships in Galveston, Texas, and off Martinique. With consummate timing, Semmes always kept one jump ahead of the Northern ships sent after him. The fame of the Alabama spread. Her captain, with
"The 'democratic’ part of the proceedings closed as soon as the articles were signed. The 'public meeting’ just described was the first and last ever held on the Alabama and no other stump speech was ever made to the crew. When I wanted a man to do anything after this I did not talk to him about 'nationalities’ or 'liberties’ or 'double wages’ but I gave him a rather sharp order and if that order was not obeyed in 'double quick’ the delinquent found himself in limbo. Democracies do very well for the land but monarchies ... are the only successful government for the sea.”
southern manners and civility, paid careful attention to saving the lives of the luckless passengers and crew of the ships he sank. He also strictly avoided attacking neutral vessels. As was customary with raiders during a war, Semmes flew a variety of flags and stopped and searched many vessels looking for Yankees flying a British flag, or carrying cargo to New England under a neutral (British) flag.
By May 1863, when the Alabama shifted her activities to the coast of Brazil, she was a legend, rating comment and progress reports in the London Times. She put to sea and once again dropped out of sight just as Union ships, dispatched to catch her, closed in on Brazil. There was speculation all over the world as to where next she would strike or be sighted.
On 20 June 1863, unknown to the outside world the Alabama captured a 350-ton Union bark, the Conrad. Semmes put a prize crew on board under Acting Lieutenant Low, renamed her the Tuscaloosa and considered her a ship of war of the Confederate Navy. The two Confederate ships sailed east together. This act would have repercussions in Cape Town.
On 29 July the Alabama made Duffen Island and anchored in Saldanha Bay—a remote and rather desolate spot on the west coast of South Africa, for a week the American and British officers and their cosmopolitan crew took turns sight-seeing and hunting South Africa’s fabulous game.
Semmes transferred 30 prisoners from the Alabama to a British ship, the Atlas, with the request that they be put ashore in Cape Town. He also asked the skipper— Captain Boyce—to request permission for the Alabama to proceed for quick repairs in Table Bay and for the Tuscaloosa to tie-up at the Naval Base (Simonstown) not far from Cape Town.
By the time the Alabama left Saldanha Bay on 5 August for Table Bay everyone in Cape Town knew the fabled Confederate warship was on its way.
By 1 p.m., the signalman on Table Top Mountain sighted the Alabama and word spread quickly. According to the local newspaper, Argus, essentially everyone in town turned out to watch from various vantage
points on the heights. Lions Hill and Kloof Road were so packed with the curious that cabs became stuck in the traffic jam. Excitement was intense.
Then in a dramatic touch, unbelievable if staged, the signalman on Table Top Mountain sighted another Yankee sail, making for Table Bay. This ship was flying the Stars and Stripes. The Yankee Cargo ship Sea Bride was entering Table Bay almost simultaneously with the Alabama. Word spread that a sea battle was going to be fought under the very eyes of the Capetonians.
At 4:00 p.m. under light airs, the Sea Bride (Captain Charles f. White) entered the bay from the southeast just as the Alabama entered from the northwest. The Stars and Stripes faced the Stars and Bars. The unarmed and unarmored steamless cargo ship Sea Bride, was no match for the Alabama. A shot from the Alabama brought the Sea Bride to. Semmes steamed his cruiser around his prey, leaving not 20 yards between the two enemy American ships. He then sent over a boarding party and took off the captain and crew as prisoners to be landed shortly thereafter in Cape Town.
All of this happened directly off Green Point. An enormous furor arose, and reverberated for months thereafter, as to whether the capture did not in fact occur in neutral waters. The legal dividing line of the time was one nautical league, or three miles. This, we are told, was the maximum distance that a shot could carry from land. All agreed the closest land was Robben Island which Semmes resolutely maintained was four miles from the site of capture. The American Consul in Cape Town had witnesses to confirm that the capture was less than two miles from land. He, therefore, made claim on the Cape Town authorities to seize the Sea Bride and return her to the Union authorities. This the local authorities did not do. Local sentiment was entirely for the gallant southerner and his glamorous privateer (or man-of-war).
Semmes anchored the Alabama off Cape Town and received visitors. A cluster of small boats tied up alongside the famed cruiser. His cabin was deluged with fruits and flowers. His servant, Belli, accepted formal cards from visitors and announced the gentry to the skipper who received them with the gentility of the
old south. The inhabitants were charmed. He and the officers were lionized for the duration of their stay.
On 7 August, a brisk gale struck Cape Town.but by 9 August Semmes received permission to proceed to the Naval Base at nearby Simonstown for repairs.
There he joined the Tuscaloosa which had been dispatched to this base directly from Saldanha Bay. The Alabama remained five days in Simonstown and continued to enjoy the plaudits of Cape Town society. Casks of wine from the nearby famous Constantia vineyards were brought to Semmes as gifts.
Semmes gave his crew liberty in Simonstown. Many got very drunk and 14 of his cosmopolitan crew did not show up when it became time to sail. Semmes, an old hand at this type of naval challenge, got the volunteered services of 11 of the "sailors of the cosmopolitan class” whom he described as "ragged whiskey filled vagabonds”. He bought the services of these volunteers from lodging house proprietors who delivered the semi-responsive bodies of their "boarders” to Semmes on the Alabama.
It is a little difficult to follow the legal logic of Semmes in excusing this recruitment of sailors for his man-of-war in a neutral port. Semmes, however, seemed satisfied in the just nature of his act, and with them he sailed out of the Cape once again.
En route he passed another Yankee ship—The Wenzell—'o\sx this time he was clearly in neutral waters and he did not tempt fate a second time.
The Sea Bride with her cargo and her prize crew had been sent to the Bay of Angra Pequena—Hottentot country, and thus not considered to be under International Law. By prearranged agreement Semmes transferred the Sea Bride and her cargo to a man who had purchased her in Cape Town. Semmes stated he got about one third of her actual value. The money apparently was sent to the Confederate treasury.
The Tuscaloosa {Conrad), sailed for Brazil over the protests of the U. S. Consul who claimed the ship had been illegally seized. According to Maritime Law such conversion of a captured ship can only be performed by the official action of a prize court. This, of course, had not been done. Many months later, on 4 March, 1864 when the Tuscaloosa revisited Cape Town she was seized by Cape authorities as an uncondemned prize. Later this decision was reversed and she was again to be returned to the Confederate States of America, but by this time the war was over.
Meanwhile, evading by good fortune and the closest margin, the U. S. man of war Vanderbilt, which outgunned the Confederate warship, the Alabama set sail for the Indian Ocean, Singapore, the Indies and even went as far as Hong Kong, capturing and burning U. S. ships along the entire way. She returned six months later to Cape Town, on 20 March 1864, and stayed for five days. She then set sail for Europe and the coast of France hoping to catch more Yankee cargo ships.
Fate caught up with the Alabama on 19 June 1864 where she had taken refuge in Cherbourg Harbor. The U. S. man-of-war Kearsarge which was on station for this very purpose bottled her up in the harbor. Captain Winslow, USN, issued a challenge to Semmes to come out and fight in the open sea. The two ships were evenly matched, Semmes still full of fight accepted the challenge immediately. In the ensuing short fight the Alabama was sunk. Semmes claimed that Captain Winslow played an unfair "trick” by draping anchor chains over the vulnerable portions of the side of the Kearsarge which deflected the shells of the Alabama.
Captain Semmes was taken from the water by the British ship Deerhound which took him to England and saved him from capture by the Kearsarge.
Captain Semmes, in the tradition of his amazing career, worked his way back to America through Texas and an overland trip to Richmond. In the final days of the war he served as a Rear Admiral in charge of the James River Confederate Fleet. When this fleet was immobilized he took its artillery and was commissioned a General of Artillery under Robert E. Lee.
This fabled man in his legendary ship had carried out one of her most dramatic and certainly most widely witnessed actions in Table Bay. No wonder the Alabama is still remembered in legend and song by the natives of Cape' Town, South Africa.
______________________ Phonetically Speaking
Shortly after the Spanish-American War, a Navy wife shopping in downtown Washington, asked that her purchase be sent to her home. Asked the address, she replied that, "Navy Yard is all that is necessary.” On being told that the address was not definite enough, the wife suggested that "Commandant’s House” could be added. In due course, the package arrived marked "Common Dance House.”
Captain Edgar K. Thompson, USN (Ret)-
{The Naval Institute will pay $23.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)