They rowed quietly across the placid waters of dark Melbourne Harbor until a huge black hull, towering masts, and tracery of rigging loomed above, blotting out shore lights. Behind their boat, at the end of a line, floated a cask containing 250 pounds of black powder with a cocked revolver and cord attached. With the only sounds from the sleeping ship being occasional soft voices and the footsteps of the watch on deck, they secured the cask to the hull with a chain and rowed away. But there would be no explosion; the chain broke, and the operation was aborted.
When sailors of the American bark Mustang returned to San Francisco 111 days later, they told a reporter this tale of their February 1865 attempt to blow up the CSS Shenandoah with a “torpedo.” Had they succeeded, the irony would have been manifest, as one of the Confederacy’s most innovative weapons was turned against it. No other reference to the episode has been found, and given the Shenandoah’s high state of alert at the time against just such dangers, one can doubt that it occurred exactly as related. But the sentiment was genuine and this, or something like it, must have been contemplated by more than one group of enraged Yankees.1
Targeting Maritime Commerce
The Shenandoah represented a novel breed: hated pirate to Northerners, feared privateer to citizens of neutral trading nations, heroic warship to Southerners and their supporters. The status of Confederate commerce cruisers in the antiquated and complex body of international law was ambiguous, causing a great deal of rancor between London, Washington, and Richmond, with critical implications for the outcome of the Civil War. Great Britain, the most powerful maritime power, struggled with conflicting factions enthusiastically backing North and South. The fight across the Atlantic endangered trade, the economy, and domestic stability. Rebel raiders were smack in the middle of this diplomatic maelstrom and contributed to it.
The Shenandoah was the former Sea King, a sleek and beautiful British tea clipper with a steam engine. She had been purchased, armed, and commissioned on 19 October 1864 near the island of Madeira in the North Atlantic. Captain James Waddell, a North Carolinian, carried orders to continue depredations on Union commerce so effectively advanced by the infamous CSS Alabama, now resting silently on the bottom of the English Channel after her fiery clash with the Union screw sloop Kearsarge the previous June. The Shenandoah had taken seven Yankee merchants and a whaler in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. After leaving Melbourne, she would proceed to the Bering Strait, capture 30 more prizes—most of them weeks after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox—fire the last gun of the Civil War, and circumnavigate the globe flying the last Confederate banner.
Eight such Confederate warships destroyed more than 100,000 tons of Union shipping worth $17 million, but drove another 800,000 tons into foreign ownership with British and others eagerly buying them. The war brought maritime New England’s golden age to a close, a blow from which the American merchant service never fully recovered. Several Rebel raiders, including the most effective of them—the Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah—were British built, armed, equipped, at least partially manned, and sold to the Confederacy. Central to the controversy was the legality of such vessels as legitimate articles of neutral trade, along with British obligations to accord them equal status with U.S. warships. The Alabama’s dramatic and destructive cruise became a cause célèbre, an illustration of the pitfalls of neutrality, and a source of extreme acrimony between the two nations.2
President Abraham Lincoln was determined to interdict trade with seceded states, starving them of funds, war matériel, and necessities, but obstructing the passage of foreign merchant vessels in peacetime was an act of war. British Ambassador to the United States Richard Lyons stated in 1861: “If the United States determined to stop by force so important a commerce as that of Great Britain with the cotton-growing States, I could not answer for what might happen. . . . An immense pressure would be put upon Her Majesty’s Government to use all the means in their power to open these ports.” The term “all means” included war.3
The alternative was a formal blockade, which was itself an act of war between nations. But Lincoln maintained that the Confederacy was not a nation; the United States was fighting a rebellion, not a war. Despite this inconsistency, he declared the blockade on 19 April 1861, one week after Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter. The possibility of conflict over trade became real and immediate. So in May 1861, Queen Victoria officially proclaimed neutrality, formally recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent and extending protections of neutral status to British vessels as long as they respected the blockade and did not carry contraband. Belligerents had three superior rights: to halt and inspect suspect ships of all nations on the high seas, to confiscate military supplies—contraband—intended for the enemy, and to blockade the enemy.4
Not appreciating the subtleties of international law and British sensibilities, Yankees were outraged and Southerners delighted that the queen had taken what appeared to be a big step toward recognizing the Confederacy as an independent nation. However incorrect they were in this conclusion, subsequent events convinced each side that the British flagrantly violated neutrality in favor of the other, generating a great deal of rancor lasting long after 1865. There was no middle ground and a lot of room for disagreement. Old and contentious controversies resurfaced concerning the rights and responsibilities of neutral powers. The definition of contraband was restricted to items directly supporting armies, and a blockade had to be considered effective to be recognized, but both concepts were subject to interpretation.5
Ironically, the positions of the two governments were historically reversed. The British tended to restrain the ocean commerce of other nations. They dealt harshly with neutrals trading with the enemy, most recently during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, while Americans clung to the edge of their continent prospering on commerce. Imperial trade restrictions and taxes had fueled the American Revolution. The United States fought for neutral trading rights during the Quasi-War with France, and in 1812 declared war again with Great Britain on these issues. Now the tables were turned. The United States made every effort to impede trade with and minimize international support for the Confederacy, while it became British policy to uphold neutral rights for unrestricted trade of non-contraband goods.
The Confederates took every advantage of their status and insisted on their rights. The government could contract loans, purchase arms and ships in neutral nations, and commission cruisers with power of search and seizure on the high seas. Ships flying the Confederate ensign were to be accorded the same status as those of any other nation, including the United States, and were to be treated fairly with regard to assistance, supplies, and repairs in neutral ports. Wherever Confederate cruisers appeared, U.S. embassy and consular authorities vehemently opposed any support whatever, insisting that these were simply rebels and pirates and should be treated as such despite official belligerent status. Lacking clear direction from parent governments, colonial and local officials struggled with irreconcilable demands of the combatants.
She’s a Pirate
The Shenandoah’s 25 January–18 February 1865 visit to Melbourne, the most remote and isolated outpost of the British Empire, threw these issues into relief. Immediately on her arrival, William Blanchard, U.S. consul in Melbourne, fired off a letter to the governor: “I avail myself of this opportunity to call upon your Excellency to cause the said Shenandoah . . . to be seized for piratical acts.” She did not come within the queen’s neutrality proclamation, he maintained, never having entered a port of the “so-styled Confederate States of America” for the purposes of naturalization, and consequently was not entitled to belligerent rights. “I therefore protest against any aid or comfort being extended to said piratical vessel in any of the ports of this colony.”6
This was the initial salvo of a fierce diplomatic war, a barrage of protests and affidavits. It must be evident, Blanchard contended, that all presumptions of fact and law were against the legal character of the vessel, which had no legitimacy as a commissioned warship of a recognized nation. The Shenandoah was a registered British merchant ship; she came from nowhere, and destroyed without adjudication and without necessity. “The undersigned will not doubt, that . . . your Excellency will give so much weight, and no more, to a bit of bunting and a shred of gold lace, as they deserve.”7
But the British never accepted the pirate thesis, however incessantly and vociferously it was proclaimed. The commissioning of warships came under national law; there was no requirement to have originated in or even visited the home country. It had taken 300 difficult years for Great Britain to establish a position of maritime supremacy. The entire structure of maritime international law depended on British leadership. Rules of neutrality must be impartially enforced as a matter of example. On the other hand, they could not be so zealous as to establish precedents that would tie their hands in future conflicts where commerce raiders built in neutral ports could be turned against them.
On the advice of Crown law officers, the governor responded to Consul Blanchard: There was no evidence of piratical acts and whatever the previous history of the Shenandoah, the government was bound to treat her as a ship-of-war belonging to a belligerent power.
‘She Is . . . But a Privateer’
That did not, however, end the controversy in Melbourne. Although the Shenandoah enjoyed enthusiastic support among the populace, a significant number of influential people were acutely worried about her presence. According to the Melbourne Age: “Whatever may be the pretensions of the Shenandoah, she is strictly speaking but a privateer. . . . The method may be strictly lawful, but it is exceedingly inglorious, and they who engage in it are entitled to no honor. . . . The day may come when the unoffending people of this colony may be made to suffer for the quarrels of nations in the other hemisphere.”8
There appeared to be little public debate in Melbourne of the central Civil War issues—union, secession, states’ rights, slavery. Pro-Union sentiment focused on repugnance for commerce raiding, dangers for the umbilical cords of trade with Europe and America, and local issues such as land reform and tariffs. The war generated economic uncertainty even in Australia, with widely fluctuating prices and availability affecting huge quantities of imports.
The Age produced rambling editorials condemning the Rebel ship in language worthy of the most ardent Yankee: “We cannot regard the Shenandoah as other than a marauding craft, and her officers and crew than as a gang of respectable pirates. The vessel cannot claim to rank as a ship of war, nor ought the commissions of her officers entitle them to a place with gentlemen holding similar rank in the navies of recognized powers.” She is the Sea King under a false name and false colors. She is as defenseless as her victims against a well-directed shot from a true warship. She does not fight honorably in her country’s defense but destroys unarmed antagonists for plunder. They would soon hear of corn-laden ships from California having been burnt or sunk. “Who knows whether this vessel will confine her operations to ships sailing under the American flag? Our gold ships are very tempting.”9
And Captain Waddell was there to injure Australian commerce with the aid of British subjects. Was the Shenandoah just a joint stock speculation whose only object was plunder? What would happen when Australia’s coasts swarmed with American privateers, depriving the colony of intercourse with foreign countries? Instead of fêting these people, Australians should be helping the government get rid of them.10
A “Neutral Englishman” expressed shame and humiliation that the Shenandoah was an English vessel, armed, equipped, and manned by British subjects. These Southerners could not prevail, he argued, even if they destroyed every Federal vessel on the seas. Their work would affect the poorer classes of the colony more than the Northern states. The price of everything from flour to shoes would soar. Why did she not protect the blockade-runners, obtaining glory where it is to be found? Is it right that, by stretching a loophole in international law, such a system of buccaneering is countenanced? “If so, where is it to stop?”11
She’s a Man-of-War
With war pending early in 1861, Raphael Semmes (future captain of the Alabama) had warned that the South’s Yankee opponents were 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, wrote Semmes, only to place licensed privateers under sufficient legal constraint to prevent degeneration into abuse and piracy. Even New England ships and capital would serve the Confederacy for profit. Privateering would be analogous to the militia system on land.12
The Confederate Congress duly authorized privateers, and in response President Lincoln threatened to license his own, but did not follow through. There were virtually no Southern merchant ships on the seas to capture, and he did not wish to further degrade already tenuous relations with Great Britain. 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 300 years, the business was not profitable.13
So Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory determined to buy or build vessels configured solely for commerce destruction and fund them from the treasury. The Florida and Alabama had been prototypes, built from the keel up in England and magnificently suited for the purpose. But starting with Raphael Semmes’ little Sumter in 1861, most Confederate raiders had been civilian ships that were converted, armed, and commissioned. Now the advantages of fast sail were merged in a single vessel of relatively low cost with steam propulsion and minimum armament against a vast merchant fleet almost exclusively under sail and virtually unarmed—an overwhelming tactical superiority.
Consul Blanchard delivered another legal broadside, defining the Shenandoah as “an illegal and criminal rover-of-the-sea.” This time he referenced not slippery international law but specific British statute: those provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act forbidding Her Majesty’s subjects from fitting out, equipping, or arming vessels for combat in wars where Britain was neutral. He cited as precedent the hotly contested case of the screw steamer Alexandra. In the spring of 1863, the American consul at Liverpool learned from his spies that the Alexandra was being built as a Confederate cruiser; he convinced British officials to seize the ship. But the Crown lost the case following lengthy court proceedings and the Alexandra was returned to her owners. The government could not prove that they planned to present the ship as a gift to the Confederate government, which they did, rather than, as they maintained, employ her as a passenger boat, mail boat, or yacht.14
Although a tactical victory, the case marked a turning point in attitude toward Confederate ship procurement. The British walked a fine line between proper discharge of international obligations and protection of lawful private enterprise. Their firms were making great profits selling ordnance to both sides. Dozens of blockade-runners had been converted or built. Shipyards were inundated with profitable contracts, and ships were legitimate products of industry and trade. However, anti-British sentiment in the United States over the raiders became intense. After Confederate defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863, it began to look as if the Union might actually prevail, so the British monitored Rebel shipbuilding activities much more closely.15
The Alexandra case was lost, maintained Blanchard, only because the government could not prove the owner’s intent. The Alexandra and Sea King were fitted out under similar circumstances for the same purposes, and proof of intent was that it was carried out—post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The colonial attorney general had already admitted that, if the Shenandoah had returned to Great Britain after taking prizes, she would be seized. The hostile cruise, and therefore the offense, was still in progress, interrupted in Melbourne only to make it more effective thereafter. The vessel again lay in reach of British law. On the inconvenient technicality that fitting out, arming, and equipping had been accomplished at Madeira and not in British territory as stated in the law, Blanchard claimed that she was prepared in England as a transport or stores ship for a cruiser and then became a cruiser.16
The Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819 provided no comprehensive guidance for such a case, and there were no court precedents prior to the Alexandra. Blanchard wanted it both ways. If the Shenandoah was a cruiser in international law, then she violated the Foreign Enlistment Act; if she was not a cruiser, then she was a pirate. He pointedly inquired why a violation in one part of Her Majesty’s domains did not constitute a violation in another part. The reply? Blanchard’s letters provided no grounds for altering the governor’s views on the subject.
The War Down Under
The court of public opinion also was in session. As reported in the Herald, a large, impromptu meeting convened at the Criterion Hotel, the most luxurious American rendezvous in Melbourne. Issues were hashed over and resolutions debated. Some participants claimed that the Southerners had no more right to send out such privateers than those who carried on the Irish rebellion; the pirate should be seized. But others, apparently an enthusiastic majority, countered that the Shenandoah was not a pirate. The Southerners were of Anglo-Saxon stock, and if they unanimously demanded self-government, they should be allowed. It would be an act of cowardice for any government to seize a ship belonging to such a struggling confederation.17
A barrister-at-law, Francis Quinlin, presented himself as a friend of all downtrodden nationalities, of those who strove to be free. He maintained that the casus belli was not slavery but an issue of free trade versus protection. The valor and unanimity with which the people of the South were pursuing independence entitled them to be considered an independent state de facto and perhaps de jure. Like the American colonies, the Confederacy would prevail, and why shouldn’t they? Recognition was not necessary to its existence as an independent state. The government should not interfere with their happy relations with what was likely to become a great nation.
A Dr. Rowe seconded this motion. Australia was a colony itself and should take notice of this struggle as similar to one Australians themselves could face one day; it was simply a demand for self-government. Concluded the Herald: A vote of thanks to the chairman and three cheers for the Shenandoah brought to a close “one of the most disorderly meetings which has ever been held in Melbourne.”18
It is ironic that sympathy for the Confederacy in Great Britain was concentrated in ruling elites of title and wealth identifying with aristocratic Southerners and fearing Yankee democracy—the “tyranny of the mob”—while many people of colonial Melbourne, more in tune with radical politics and the expanding franchise, favored the South as a champion opposing tyrannical central government. These Melbournians were on the wrong side of the war and the right side of history. So, was the Shenandoah a pirate, privateer, or man-of-war? It depends on your viewpoint.
1. Sacramento Daily Union, vol. 29, no. 4472, 22 July 1865.
2. Chester G. Hearn, Gray Raiders of the Sea: How Eight Confederate Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce (Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing, 1992), xv.
3. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 45.
4. Frank J. Merli, Great Britain and The Confederate Navy, 1861–1865 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 40–41. Donald A. Petrie, The Prize Game: Lawful Looting on the High Seas in the Days of Fighting Sail (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 162.
5. Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 29, 39.
6. Blanchard to Darling, “Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Great Britain” in Executive Documents Printed By Order Of The House Of Representatives During The First Session Of The Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1865–66. vol. 1, no.1, pt. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1866), 464.
7. Ibid., 464–5.
8. Melbourne Age, 27 January 1865.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 1 February 1865.
11. Ibid., 30 January 1865.
12. Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During The War Between The States (Baltimore: Kelly, Piet and Company, 1869), 92.
13. Spencer C. Tucker, Blue & Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 72–76. William Morrison Robinson, Jr., The Confederate Privateers (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1928).
14. Blanchard to Darling, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 484–85.
15. Merli, Great Britain and The Confederate Navy, 160–77.
16. Blanchard to Darling, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 484–85.
17. Cyril Pearl, Rebel down under: When the ‘Shenandoah’ shook Melbourne, 1865 (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1970), 104–11.
18. Ibid.