Page 20 - The Parish News May 2019

History brought near...
Because of my interest in the American Civil War, whenever I visited the USA I would take the opportunity of visiting one of its many battle sites. So when Lynne and I were in Florida, just an hour’s flight from Charleston, we took the opportunity of a trip to the place where it all started, when the pre-natal Confederacy opened fire on the Federal Fort Sumter, which guarded the entrance to Charleston harbour.
Whilst there we came upon the ship named CSS Alabama, which proved to have an amazing history and a very strong local connection with Wiltshire, now commemorated on the wall of Easton Royal Church!
As part of its offensive against the Confederacy, the Union blockaded southern ports to prevent economically important exports of cotton and imports of armaments. Shipbuilding there was inhibited and so the Confederacy secretly commissioned boats to be built elsewhere.
The UK government took a neutral position, whilst Manchester, politically strong at the time, gave strong support to the Union and its anti-slavery aspirations and received personal thanks from President Lincoln but Liverpool, dependent as it was on shipping and ship building was more receptive.
So a hugely innovative ship, number 64, was legally built by John Laird shipyards in Birkenhead as a ‘merchantman’, to all intents a sailing ship, but with telescopic funnel to disguise its steam power and manoeuvrability, and a retractable propeller allowing it to economise on fuel and extend its range by the use of sail.
Ship 64 legally left Birkenhead on a “pleasure trip”, but soon dropped off its “female visitors” at Holyhead and headed off to the Azores where it met another English ship carrying armaments ready to be fitted to the soon commissioned at sea, CSS Alabama.
Raphael Semmes, its Confederate captain, apparently invited its English crew to serve on the boat to muted response, until he offered a share of all prize monies taken, at which point there was a cheer and the charge was on. And, the ship’s surgeon was a certain young David Herbert Llewellyn, educated at Marlborough and the son of the vicar of Easton Royal.
The combination of determination, stealth, firepower and manoeuvrability made the CSS Alabama hugely successful and it sank or captured 64 Union ships during its two years in service, each time replenishing its own supplies and offering the advanced opportunity of surrender and recovering sailors before despatching them to safety on
18 THE NEWS MAY 2019 www.thenewseec@gmail.com