by Terry Smyth
Captain Waddell, accustomed to stepping aboard ships already in shipshape, was appalled. Not only was the ship vulnerable to enemy attack in such a condition, but she desperately needed more manpower to finish the work, and then to sail her. To that end, he ordered all sailors from both vessels to assemble on the quarterdeck of the Shenandoah.
Waddell went down to his cabin and reappeared on deck in full uniform, wearing the dress sword and sidearm of a captain in the Confederate Navy, and addressed the men.
Waddell writes, ‘I informed them of the changed character of the Sea King, read my commission to them, pictured to them a brilliant, dashing cruise, and asked them to join the service of the Confederate States and assist an oppressed and brave people in their resistance to a powerful and arrogant northern government.’2
But if he’d hoped his speech would stir the blood like Shakespeare’s Henry V at Agincourt, he was sorely disappointed. Only 19 men accepted his offer, leaving him with a complement of only 43 to sail a ship that required 150.
Captain Corbett told Captain Waddell that, in his opinion, taking to the ocean so seriously shorthanded would be foolhardy. Waddell, swayed by the view of such an experienced seaman, advised Lieutenant Whittle he thought it wise to sail to Teneriffe, and from there arrange for James Bulloch to have a crew sent out to join them.
Whittle counselled against this. ‘Don’t confer, Sir, with parties who are not going with us,’ he said. ‘Call your young officers together and learn from their assurances what they can and will do.’
The Captain did so, and put the question to his officers – Should they take the ship to Teneriffe or take the ocean? The response was unanimous: ‘Take the ocean!’3
And so the die was cast. The men who refused to join the Shenandoah were sent aboard the Laurel, which, after exchanging guns of salute, steamed away.
The 43-man complement of the new raider included 24 officers and 19 men, only 10 of whom were deckhands. The rest were stokers, stewards and a cabin boy. In an age when it was seen as an affront to the natural order for an officer and gentleman to engage in manual labour, the officers were obliged to help sail the ship, even stripping off their jackets to help raise the anchor.
Waddell dashed off a letter to James Bulloch, expressing his disappointment at the poor response to his call for volunteers.
Bulloch later commented, ‘Under the circumstances, I was not surprised that the tone of his report was somewhat desponding; but there was no evidence of a wish to be out of the work – only a fear that he might not be able to accomplish all that was expected of him.’4
‘Never before was ship beset by difficulties apparently so insurmountable,’ Assistant Surgeon Fred McNulty remarked.
‘Although liable at any hour to meet the challenge shot of the enemy, we entered upon our duties without fear. There was work for every man to do and every man put his heart in his task. Then, when after days of toil with blistered hands, all was stored properly below, and while the carpenter and his mates cut portholes for the guns, the captain took his place at the wheel, and officers and men, regardless of rank, barefooted and with trousers rolled up, scrubbed and holy-stoned the decks.’5
Lieutenant Whittle, while sharing McNulty’s pride in a job well done, felt a pang of homesickness. Although only 24, he was the oldest of the officers (apart from the 41-year-old captain) and keenly felt the distance between himself and his family back in Virginia. ‘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.’6
With not nearly enough hands on deck, the skipper decided to steam by day and sail by night, yet, for all his problems, his mood soon lifted. ‘The little adventurer entered upon her watchful career, throwing to the breeze the flag of the South, and demanding for her a place among her sister nations upon that vast expanse of water.
‘Lieutenant Chew effaced the words Sea King from the stern of the Shenandoah. Our 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 who stood upon our deck and acclamations from the Laurel that was steaming away for the land we love to tell the tale to those who would rejoice that another cruiser was afloat and who would share the triumphs or reverses which might befall her.’7
When news of the rebels’ ruse got back to England, leaving US Ambassador Adams incandescent with rage, a pro-Confederacy British newspaper crowed, ‘We have much pleasure in being able to state that, at almost the same time when the Florida was treacherously seized in Bahia harbour, the Confederate flag was hoisted on a new cruiser at least the equal of the Florida.
‘Having received her crew and armament on the high seas, far beyond any neutral jurisdiction, there can fortunately be no pretence of accusing her of violation of municipal law or international operations.
‘The Florida is gone – long live the Shenandoah!’8
For the new raider, first blood was mere days away. On the afternoon of 30 October, the Shenandoah spied in the distance a barque – in other words a sailing ship with three or more masts, having square sails on the foremasts and the aftermast rigged fore-and-aft. Guessing the ship to be a Yankee, the Shenandoah gave chase, and by dusk was within seven miles (11km) of her and closing fast. The next morning, to the Confederates’ surprise, their quarry, which yesterday was dead ahead, was now to wind-ward. The Shenandoah took in sail, lowered the propeller, got up steam and, when in signalling range, raised the Union Jack. Over the coming months, she occasionally displayed the French and other flags apart from the Union Jack when flying false colours, and her crew sometimes wore blue shirts over their grey uniforms to avoid suspicion.
When the unsuspecting barque replied by hoisting the Stars and Stripes, the raider moved within firing range, ran up the Stainless Banner then fired a warning shot.
‘The stranger showed chase, but quickly changed his mind when a hustling shot across his bows said, “Do come and see us,” – the first of 50 pressing invitations,’ Assistant Surgeon Fred McNulty recalls.9
Outgunned and out-manoeuvred, the barque hove to and the Confederates boarded her. She was a Yankee, sure enough – the 573-ton American barque Alina, out of Searsport, Maine, a new ship on only her second voyage, bound for Buenos Aires from Newport, Wales, with a cargo of railroad iron.
The Alina’s master, Captain Staples, was told his ship was a prize of the Confederate States of America, and he was ordered to collect his papers and personal property and come aboard the Shenandoah, along with his officers and crew.
The Alina was a valuable prize, estimated to be worth $95,000 in gold. Captain Waddell was delighted, as was his executive officer, who recorded in his journal, ‘We stripped her of everything we wanted, which well may be imagined was an immense deal particularly as she was our first prize.’10
From the Alina, Waddell’s crew removed blocks for the gun tackles, cotton canvas for sails, and other provisions lacking on the Shenandoah. The officers helped themselves to cutlery, crockery, basins and jugs for the mess, and the skipper commandeered a chronometer, and a spring mattress to make his bunk more comfortable.
In Waddell’s opinion, Yankee shipwrights were the best in the business, and the Alina – a beautiful and well-equipped vessel – was a credit to their craft. This assessment did not cause him any regret for sending her to Davy Jones’s locker, however. Concerned that setting her afire risked a red glow in the sky that could alert any Yankee cruisers lurking nearby, he opted to scuttle the Alina, ordering the ship’s carpenter to drill holes in her hull below the water line.
Master’s Mate Cornelius Hunt writes, ‘The Alina was condemned, and it fell to my lot to return with the Captain to say goodbye to his ship and bring away his clothing and any other little personal property he might wish to preserve.
‘That he felt his misfortune keenly was evident, although he manfully strove to conceal it under a cool, non
chalant exterior.’11
Informed of what was about to happen to his ship, Captain Staples turned to Hunt and said, ‘I tell you what, matey, I’ve a daughter at home that that craft was named for, and it goes against me cursedly to see her destroyed.’
Hunt replied that he and his fellow officers meant him no harm, but, in carrying out their orders to prey upon US merchantmen, individuals were bound to suffer.
‘I know it’s only the fortunes of war, and I must take my chances with the rest,’ said the captain, ‘but it’s damn hard.’ And he hoped the day might come when he’d have his revenge.12 Lieutenant Whittle describes what happened next:
‘At 4.45pm she went down stern first under all plain sail and the sight was grand and awful. You might go to sea for many a day and would not see a vessel sink. She had been gradually sinking for some time and had gotten to the water’s edge. She was in this position a man going down for the first time and struggling to prevent it. Finally, at 4.45 a sea swept over her, she settled aft, her stern sank very rapidly and her bow went straight into the air and turned a regular somersault as she went down. [We] could distinctly hear the cracking and breaking of the spars of the sails and as the bow went under a beautiful jet of water was thrown up high in the air.’13
Cornelius Hunt, who, like Whittle, had never before seen a ship sink, was appalled by the sight. Watching the barque go down, he felt ‘a curious heart-heaviness that none but the sailor can understand’. He likened it to witnessing ‘the sinking away of a soul into the oceans of eternity’.14
The captain and officers of the Alina declined an offer to join the rebels but signed paroles. After declaring under oath that they would not go to sea again until the war was over, and would not take up arms against the Confederacy, they were accommodated in the wardroom and given the freedom of the ship. The captain admitted he did not expect to be treated so kindly by an enemy, but initially refused all offers of refreshment and remained aloof. However, after a while he thawed somewhat in the company of Cornelius Hunt, whom he regaled with rollicking tales of his adventures at sea.
Of the Alina’s crew, only two, German sailors Herman Wicke and Charles Behnck, agreed to enlist in the Confederate Navy. The rest were clapped in irons and confined in the topgallant forecastle, which they shared with the Shenandoah’s crew, the sheep and the chickens.
Curiously, contradicting the accounts of other officers, Fred McNulty insists no captured crewmen were ever put in irons on board the Shenandoah. ‘I will not stop to enumerate in detail, but rise to indignantly deny as a base lie that Captain Waddell ever put a man in irons because he would not join our ship,’ McNulty writes. ‘James I. Waddell was a gentleman, and would never stoop to such conduct. Certainly there must be discipline on board ship, and at times when there were too many prisoners we had to see that they did not rise and take possession of the vessel.’15
The sailors Wicke and Behnck would later claim they had signed up under duress – in fear of their lives. Captain Waddell insisted otherwise – that their captors had enlightened them as to the righteousness of the Confederate cause.
The Shenandoah continued southward for days of alternating rain squalls and tropical sunshine, while her crew, still short-handed but in good spirits, looked forward eagerly to the next cry of ‘Sail ho!’
The cry came on 5 November, when the rebels chased, captured and burnt the schooner Charter Oak, out of Boston and bound for San Francisco. Her cargo, valued at $15,000, included coal, furniture and canned tomatoes.
While the rebels helped themselves to the canned tomatoes, the Charter Oak’s master, Captain Gilmer, came aboard the Shenandoah with his wife and her widowed sister with her young son, Frank. Waddell showed them Southern hospitality.
‘The widow had lost her husband at Harper’s Ferry. He had been a sergeant in the Federal army. We all felt a compassion for these poor women, and we had no idea of retaliating upon them for the injuries which General Hunter, Sheridan, Sherman and their kind had inflicted upon our unhappy countrywomen.’16
Waddell let Captain Gilmer and his family occupy his stern cabin, and, in a further demonstration of chivalry Dixie-style, when $200 in cash was found aboard the Charter Oak, and Gilmer swore it was all the money he had, Waddell presented the cash to Mrs Gilmer on behalf of the Confederacy, on condition that she give none of it to her husband.
The crew of the Charter Oak were shown no such compassion. They all refused to sign on and were sent in irons to join the men of the Alina, and the sheep and chickens, in the forecastle.
Three days on, the raider’s third prize, the barque D. Godfrey, out of Boston, bound for Valparaiso, was sent to the bottom of the sea along with most of her cargo of beef and pork, much to Waddell’s regret. The Shenandoah was by now so full of booty that she had room for only 22 barrels of each. Six of the captured crew signed on, boosting the ship’s complement to 35, still nowhere near the 150 required.
Another three days later, Waddell offered the Danish brig Anna Jane a barrel of beef from the D. Godfrey and the chronometer from the Alina in exchange for taking aboard some of the Confederates’ prisoners. The Danes accepted the offer.
Through the South Atlantic to the Cape of Good Hope, the tally of prize ships rose almost daily: the brigantine Susan, out of New York, from which vessel two men and a boy joined the Shenandoah; the barque Adelaide, of Baltimore; the clipper ship Kate Prince, of Portsmouth; and the schooner Lizzie M. Stacey, out of Boston. Four of her seven crew joined the Shenandoah.
Of the captured ships, most were set afire, two were scuttled and two were ransomed. To ransom a captured ship, a raider set a price on her based on the value of her cargo, to be paid to the Confederacy at the end of the war. Unsurprisingly, no ransoms were ever paid. The ships ransomed were the Adelaide, upon proof that she was owned by a Southern sympathiser, and the Kate Prince. All the prisoners were put aboard the Kate Prince, including Captain Gilmer of the Charter Oak, Mrs Gilmer and her sister Mrs Gage, all of whom thanked the rebels for their hospitality as they parted company.
The schooner Lizzie M. Stacey, out of Boston, bound for Honolulu, fell prey to the black raider on 13 November. Of her crew of seven, four joined the Shenandoah. Enlistments from ships captured thus far had increased the ship’s complement to 62 – still well short of the ideal of 150, but noticeably boosting efficiency.
True to maritime tradition when ‘crossing the line’, King Neptune came aboard the Shenandoah on 15 November as she crossed the equator. In time-honoured fashion, men crossing into the Southern Hemisphere for the first time were summoned on deck that evening for the initiation ceremony.
Neptune, a harpoon in his hand and a rope doormat for a hat, appeared from over the bow, followed by a motley retinue in assorted outlandish costumes.
Lieutenant Frank Chew, first of Neptune’s new subjects to face the consequences, is asked, ‘Where are you from?’ Chew knows better than to answer, for opening your mouth to speak will get it filled with a revolting concoction of grease, soap and molasses. It is, of course, a no-win situation, so the penalty for not opening your mouth is having your face lathered with the same noxious mix, shaved with a long wooden razor by the barber, then almost drowned by a torrent of water from the pump. First Officer Whittle had presumed that, although he’d never crossed the line before, his rank would spare him the indignity, but the men had other ideas. Like Chew and others, he was treated to a lather, shave and drenching.
On Assistant Surgeon Fred McNulty’s turn, when asked ‘Where are you from?’ he replied ‘Ireland’, whereupon the concoction was shoved into his mouth. Unlike the rest of the initiates, who took it all in good spirits, McNulty hauled off and punched the barber, sending him sprawling onto the deck. His shipmates, except for the barber, laughed it off as all part of the fun, but it would not be the last time on this cruise McNulty would let his quick temper get the better of him.
On 4 December, the Confederates captured their first whaler, the Edward, out of New Bedford.
When the Shenandoah overhauled the Edward, it still had a harpooned whale attached to it. Fred McNulty, who found the sight amusing, wrote, ‘It was the case of the big fish eating up the little one, and we were the largest in the pond just then.’17
Lieutenant Frank Chew, after demonstrating an unfortunate tendency to be accident-prone, soon found himself on the wrong side of the Captain. On 15 December, when on watch during a heavy swell, he lost his balance and was almost lost overboard, Waddell was not amused. The next day, Chew found he had been replaced on watch by Master’s Mate Joshua Minor.
Miffed at being replaced on watch by a man of lesser rank, Chew sought advice from Surgeon Lining, who sympathised but at the same time sowed seeds of discontent, telling Chew it was wrong of the Captain to undermine his authority with the petty officers and crew. Chew, awash with reckless youth and injured pride, dashed off a letter of resignation, which he handed to Lieutenant Whittle to deliver to the Captain.
When, to Whittle’s surprise, Waddell readily accepted Chew’s resignation, Whittle proposed a compromise. Chew would return to duty as if nothing had happened, but in rough weather Whittle would join him on watch. Again, to Whittle’s surprise, the Captain agreed.
It was going to be a white Christmas – far too white.
‘I was instructed to pass the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope by the first of January 1865,’ Waddell writes, ‘and at noon of the 17th of December, the Shenandoah was east of that meridian, with a west wind following fast. The speed of the ship varied with the strength of the wind.’18
In open ocean, 5,000 miles (8,000km) from Australia, the Shenandoah had reached its farthest latitude south, between Madagascar and Antarctica – a world of floes and icebergs, scoured by the Roaring Forties.