In June 1864, the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama limped into Cherbourg, France. She’d been at sea for 22 months. In that time, under Captain Raphael Semmes, she’d captured 65 Union merchant ships, burned 52 of them, and sunk a Union warship. No other Confederate vessel came close to that record.
Semmes needed repairs. What he got instead was USS Kearsarge, which showed up three days later and parked outside the harbor.
Semmes could have stayed in port. French neutrality would have protected him. Instead, he sent a message through the US consul: he intended to fight.
Word got out. The date and time were basically announced in advance. A new rail line from Paris had just opened to Cherbourg, and the hotels filled up. On the morning of June 19, spectators lined the cliffs above the harbor to watch.
The French ironclad Couronne escorted Alabama out to make sure the fight happened in international waters.
It lasted about an hour. Alabama’s powder and shells had deteriorated after two years at sea. Her shots hit Kearsarge but did little damage. Kearsarge’s gunnery was better. Alabama started sinking.
As Alabama went down, a British private yacht called Deerhound, owned by a man named John Lancaster, raced in and pulled Semmes and his officers out of the water. Then it sailed for England. The Union couldn’t do anything about it. Semmes was gone.
After the war, Semmes was arrested but released without trial after four months. He was elected probate judge in Mobile, Alabama, but federal authorities blocked him from serving under Reconstruction. He taught philosophy at the Louisiana State Seminary (which became LSU). He edited a newspaper in Memphis. He wrote his memoirs. He practiced law until he died in 1877.
One more thing. Edouard Manet, the painter, wasn’t at the battle. But he read the newspaper accounts and started painting immediately. Twenty-six days later his painting was hanging in a Paris gallery. It’s now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sources
- Semmes, Raphael. Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co., 1869. Internet Archive
- Marvel, William. The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor’s Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
- Naval History and Heritage Command: CSS Alabama
- Philadelphia Museum of Art: Manet, The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama
- National Park Service: The Battle of Cherbourg