"Long After Civil War’s End, Rebel Raiders Fought On" Topic

… in Bering Sea

"One hundred and fifty years ago, on April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va. Textbooks typically say this event signaled the end of the Civil War. But a few historians make the case that the last shots of the war were actually fired from a Confederate ship off Alaska's coast, in the Bering Sea.

She was the CSS Shenandoah, one of a handful of Confederate "commerce raiders," commissioned to bruise the Union economy by ruining the U.S. shipping industry. The Shenandoah continued its destructive mission until the summer of 1865, nearly three months after Appomattox.

"Well, you can't really call it ‘the last shots of the Civil War,' because there was only one side that loosed a blank cartridge in capturing a whaling ship in the Bering Sea," says Sam Craghead, of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, who has studied its strange story and its last acts of aggression near the Arctic Circle…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Surrender to the British authorities in Liverpool during October 1865.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Actually Commander Waddel had a problem. When the War ends he's in the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska attacking whaling ships. It's not until then 27th June he learns of Lee's surrender and 3rd August that the is definitely over. During that time he took 10 ships.

Now commerce raiders were not included in were not included in the reconciliation and amnesty that Confederate soldiers were given to Confederate soldiers, Semmes of CSS Alabama had managed to escape charges of piracy by surrendering on May 1, 1865, as an army general under Joseph E. Johnston. Semmes' former sailors surrendered as artillerymen.

So surrendering to US lead to trail in an unsympathetic court on a charge of piracy. While Waddel could of surrendered in a British colony he felt it best to sail half way around the world to surrender in a British port and chose Liverpool because that was the site of the Confederate Commander Bulloch was stationed and who had done so much to supply ships for the CSN.

Many thanks my dear cousin! (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

A wargaming what if. August 1865, CSS Shenanddoah decided to attack San Franciso. She was sailing in, but came across the English barque Barracouta and saw in a Newspaper Johnson and Kirby Smith had surrendered. They knew the war was over. If captain Waddell hadn't seen that paper the attack would have went ahead for around August 5th. He believed the city undefended. He would have had the element of surprise, but didn't know the monitor USS Camanche was in the habor.