Civil War Today

The Strange Case of the CSS Shenandoah

As the war dragged on Jeff Davis and the Confederacy knew it was going to have to strike back at the Union economically the way the Union was striking at them. The South had tried to blockade Washington by building forts on the south side of the Potomac River but the Union neutralized them before they could do any serious damage.

The South then ordered several raiders like the Alabama constructed in English shipyards to attack Union shipping in the Atlantic. These raiders captured other ships that were themselves converted to raiders and the little Confederate Navy prospered. This brave little band was never big enough to do any real damage but they certainly gave it their best. Late in the war Davis ordered that serious damage to the northern industry had to be carried out somehow and called for an attack on northern whalers in the Pacific. This would strike at the heart of the Boston industrial base. Many Northern factories had been hurt by the cotton shortage early in the war, but an active black market in smuggled cotton had sprung up along the Mississippi and the South was never able to shut it down.

Two months after the formal surrender of the Confederacy the CSS Shenandoah, not knowing the war was over, attacked the fleet of northern whaling ships up in the Aleutian Islands, burning twenty two ships and capturing two others. The Confederate ship had setout eight months earlier from England and had been at sea when the South surrendered, so they were quite surprised to find out from a passing British warship, HMS Barracouta, that they were now pirates. Unsure of what else to do the Shenandoah sailed to Japan to seek asylum or at least some time to think things over. Ultimately, the crew of the Shenandoah surrendered the ship to the HMS Donegal on November 6, 1865 off Liverpool; having become the only Confederate flagged ship to sail around the world.

The plan the Shenandoah's crew came up with was to be imprisioned in England where they knew they would be well treated. If they had come directly back to the United States they would have been hanged straight away. Their attack had come well after the amnesty offered to Southerners for laying down their arms so it would not have covered their actions. Further, there was a lot of pent up rage and frustration in the North after the assasination of President Lincoln. The crew of the Shenandoah would have made great scape goats.

The English Government contacted the American Government and explained what had happened and the American Government officials understood: the attack, the last, the western most and the Northern most battle of the Civil War had been a tragic mistake and there was now way that the Shenandoah could have known about the surrender and called off their attack; but the facts aside, there would have been howls for blood from the families of the dead and the owners of the ships sunk if the men had been brought right back to the US right away. So the Shenandoah's crew remained in London under house arrest for several years until they could be very quietly repariated. I suspect that is why the only Civil War battle fought in Alaska is so little known.