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The background and header graphic includes the CSS ALABAMA: Photo of the CSS ALABAMA CIVIL WAR ship is from the Harper's Weekly, Nov. 27, 1862. It was prepared by Carleton Ross Willmott, Toronto. The print is numbered 1510. Few ships in recent history have captured the imaginations of so many for so long as the CSS Alabama. Built in secrecy for the Confederacy in the Liverpool shipyards of John Laird Sons and Company, the Alabama became the subject of controversy even as her keel was laid. The Union did not take kindly to this expression of British sympathy for the cotton-producing South, and much diplomatic subterfuge was required to complete and launch "290," the Alabama's nom de guerre. Afloat on the high seas by the summer of 1862, the CSS Alabama harried Yankee traders and took nearly 60 prizes, dealing a blow to the American merchant marine from which it never truly recovered. The Alabama cruised the Atlantic, rounded Africa, and visited Southeast Asia before she was finally sunk by the USS Kearsarge off the French coast near Cherbourg in June, 1864. The Alabama's brief but brilliant career has been well-documented for over a century. Contemporaneous news sources, the memoirs of her captain and officers, and official Confederate documents provide a chronicle of the Alabama at sea. Professional historians have ruminated at length on the vessel and her exploits. More recently both National Geographic and the Learning Channel covered the international effort to dive the wreck of the Alabama. The sheer beauty of the Alabama's bark rigging inspired artists of her era, including French painter Eduard Manet, and continues to fascinate modelers today. In the final analysis, children of all ages love to go down to the sea in ships. The Legendary Confederate Raider CSS ALABAMA captured or sank 69 Union vessels during the War Between the States. Commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes(whose great grandson later served on BB-60), the 1,050 ton screw sloop was built in Liverpool, England in 1862. She was sunk by the USS KEARSARGE off Cherbourg, France in 1864. There have been many ships named Alabama in our naval history. (Commissioned in 1985, the seventh USS ALABAMA, SSBN-731, a fleet ballistic missile submarine, was assigned to Commander Submarine Force Pacific in early 1986. She is currently still on patrol in the world's seas as a deterrent to nuclear attack.) source: This interest in the CSS Alabama has created a body of knowledge in various formats that reside in the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library. Boykin, Edward. Ghost Ship of the Confederacy: The Story of the Alabama and her Captain, Rapheal Semmes. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967. Gorgas E467.1.S47 B72; Hoole, Alabama Collection E467.1.S47 B72 (2 copies) Bradlee, Francis Boardman Crowninshield. The Kearsarge-Alabama Battle, The Story as Told to the Writer by James Magee of Marblehead, Seaman on the Kearsarge. Salem, Mass.: Essix Institute, 1921. Hoole, Alabama Collection E599.A3 B7 Bradlow, Edna. Here Comes the Alabama. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1958. Gorgas E599.A3 B72 (2 copies); Hoole, Alabama Collection E599.A3 B72 (2 copies) |