Things I have never spent much time paying attention to: The Confederate Navy. Because yes, the south did have one during the Civil War. So I went off down a rabbit hole, and found a story that involves British meddling, Jules Verne and Scousers fighting for the Confederacy…
For a start, it’s important to point our that the the Confederate Navy was outnumbered and outgunned. When it was created at the beginning of 1861, the Confederacy had less than 20 seaworthy vessels, whilst the Union had almost 100. Clearly, some pretty rapid construction was going to need to be done, but you can’t just start building. This was highly specialised work, and it required infrastructure. In just over a year the man in charge of the navy reported that his department had built powder mills, a rope walk, and eighteen shipyards, but the Confederacy would have been failing if they were not out here somewhere trying to buy ships from experienced builders.
Unsurprisingly, Britain looked an attractive prospect as a source of cruisers. With these cruisers, they were foreshadowing WW1, when Germany opted for commerce raiding and sneaky hit and run tactics instead of inviting an all out battle they knew they wouldn’t win.
James Bulloch in 1865. He would oversee Confederate interests in Britain. (Wikipedia)
In 1861, James Bulloch arrived in Liverpool and set up shop. A former navy officer, who had left in 1854 to work in private shipping, he was a Georgia native and had volunteered his services for the south. His job was to be the Confederacy’s man on the ground in Britain. First and foremost, he was there to try and manoeuvre southern supplies of cotton past the Union blockade and into buyers hands. With the money he made, he purchased arms, ammunition, uniforms, and naval supplies, but he quickly got involved in ship procurement too. His initial order was for six steam vessels, but the one I’m going to concentrate on started life as the Enrica.
Britain was supposed to be neutral, so how was this possible? There was a loophole, is the answer. Whilst neutrality laws prohibited delivering a completed warship to either side, there was nothing to stop John Laird Sons & Company of Birkenhead from building her, providing that she was not armed as a warship until she reached international waters. This is ropey ground if you’re the British government, hence why she was constructed in secret, known simply as Ship 290. 220 feet long, and requiring a crew of 145 men, her main firepower was half a dozen 32 pounders. On 15th May 1862, she slipped into the water without fanfare and a local crew manoeuvred her out into open water, evading the USS Tuscarora and making for the Azores. On 20th August, her captain arrived at this remote spot, and after a rapid conversion to an armed cruiser, she was commissioned a mile off Terceira Island. Enrica was dropped. She was now the CSS Alabama.
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