All of these men had significant wartime experience on ironclads and shallow-water steam gunboats: In the fall of 1861, Chew and Scales served in the “mosquito fleet” at the loss of Port Royal Sound, South Carolina; Chew observed the fall of Fort Pulaski two months later; Waddell had been on one of the Confederacy’s doomed ironclads at the Battle of New Orleans in April 1862, while Whittle, Lee, and Chew were together on another; that same month on the Mississippi, Dr. Lining witnessed the fall of Island Number Ten and New Madrid, Missouri. A few weeks later, Waddell supervised the big guns at Drewry’s Bluff on the James River when they turned back the Union fleet threatening Richmond.
Grimball and Scales had close calls on the bloody gun deck of the ironclad CSS Arkansas in July 1862 when she charged guns blazing through Admiral Farragut’s fleet above Vicksburg. And in April 1863, Chew was on board the ironclad CSS Palmetto State as they stopped a Union waterborne attack on Charleston. Scales and Lee reported to the ironclad CSS Atlanta in Savannah, which in June 1863 ran aground after a short fight and was captured by Union monitors. By the summer of 1863, future Shenandoah lieutenants all had been dispatched to Europe awaiting orders as part of a Confederate fleet that never was. Chew and Scales, however, had never been to sea, which made Waddell particularly uncomfortable. Whittle, who felt perfectly capable of mentoring his junior colleagues, would become incensed when the captain’s nervousness on the subject impugned his competence.
Now in the isolated and confined embrace of a ship so far from home, these men were settling into a web of formal and informal relationships that would define the effectiveness of the command—its ability to meet the enemy and the weather and not only to survive but to prevail in the mission. Meanwhile, work continued apace: the sailmaker prepared and fitted canvas hoods for the hatches, while engineers distilled freshwater—one of the revolutionary advantages of steam on long voyages. They could produce five hundred gallons a day, but this required a significant expenditure of coal. The captain instructed that the name Sea King be erased from the stern. Lining observed the Island of Palmas in the Canaries from fifty miles off and saw flying fish for the first time, a sign that they were approaching the tropics. He had worked harder than ever in his life; it had been a difficult time, but not an unhappy one.
Another vessel appeared, clearly Yankee built, which, when stopped and questioned, proved to be under British registry and could not be detained. “Better luck next time,” wrote Whittle, who was subject to his own melancholy, in what would become a typical journal entry: “Notwithstanding my being so busy, I have time to feel blue, as I can’t get my usual letters from my own dear ones. Oh! how much would I give to know how they are. I leave them and all to God. We have so much to be thankful for.” With occasional heavy rain and violent squalls of wind, waves crashed against the sides; decks and hull seams leaked like sieves, admitting a fine spray into berth deck and cabin.
The captain was, however, impressed with his new command as they met and passed other ships. “Shenandoah was unquestionably a fast vessel, and I felt assured it would be a difficult matter to find her superior under canvas.” Three times the Confederates dipped their ensign in salute to passing English vessels, which responded in turn—a sign of respect and friendship between nations (now as then); coming from representatives of the most powerful nation on earth, it was particularly gratifying. Waddell noted, “Our prospects brightened as she worked her way toward the line [equator] through light and variable winds, sunshine, and rain.”
On 28 October 1864, due south of the Azores and west of Dakar in the afternoon, a vessel broke the horizon ahead. Experienced sailors could guess a ship’s nationality from the contours of sails, masts and spars, and lines of hull. U.S. vessels—widely recognized as among the best—generally carried taller and narrower rigs with cotton sails in place of the grayer flax canvas preferred by Europeans. Raphael Semmes described similar encounters, praising the “whitest of cotton sails, glistening in the . . . sun,” “well-turned, flaring bows,” “grace and beauty of hull,” and “long, tapering spars” on which American shipbuilders and masters prided themselves. For some lookouts, it was almost a matter of instinct and a glance of a minute or two: this vessel was a Yankee.8
Shenandoah gained rapidly on the ship, closing to seven miles as dusk fell. Waddell reduced sail and regained contact at dawn, but the quarry had worked its way to windward. He ordered boilers fired, had the propeller lowered, took in royals and topgallants, and approached under steam. About 1 p.m., he raised English colors. The stranger replied with the U.S. flag or “the old gridiron” as Lieutenant Chew called it: “Then joy could have been seen depicted on each face. We were all desirous of seeing a ship destroyed at sea and especially when that destruction touches a Yankee pocket.” The Confederate flag replaced the English; the bark of the signal gun echoed across the water and, as required by international law, the vessel hove to for inspection.
Waddell lowered a boat and armed the crew under the direction of sailing master Bulloch. They were received at the gangway by the captain in his shirt sleeves, an informality Midshipman Mason considered to be “true Yankee style.” She was the bark Alina of Searsport, Maine, on her maiden voyage to Buenos Aires from Newport, Wales, with a cargo of railroad iron. Bulloch examined the ship’s papers, sent Alina’s captain and first mate to Shenandoah, lowered the U.S. flag, and waited impatiently for orders.
Lining observed from across the water, “I never saw greater excitement than was on board our ship when the Yankee flag came down, which showed us we had the first prize to Shenandoah.” Whittle was delighted to see the “emblem of tyranny” thus humbled. In accordance with his understanding of international law, Waddell assembled a board of officers in the wardroom as prize court. He sat as judge at the head with First Lieutenant Whittle and Alina’s master, Captain Everett Staples, to his left. Paymaster and captain’s clerk Breedlove Smith was on Waddell’s right, other officers filling the table. Whittle put the prisoner under oath and interrogated him concerning the vessel’s ownership, tonnage, and cargo.
The cargo of railroad iron was owned by an English firm, as specified on the bill of lading. Although Alina was a U.S. registered vessel, she had been loaded at a neutral port in Wales and was bound for another neutral port, Buenos Aires, with a cargo presumably owned by citizens of a neutral nation. The prize should have been bonded and released; they could not destroy the enemy ship without sacrificing neutral cargo. (A bond was formal written assurance that, in lieu of capture or destruction, the vessel’s owners would pay ransom equal to the value of ship and cargo. It would have been legal international debt had the Confederacy achieved independence.)
Here again, Raphael Semmes blazed the way. (In addition to his naval career, Semmes was an experienced lawyer and student of international law who first held prize courts on board Sumter in 1861 and again on Alabama.) He claimed to have never condemned a ship or cargo “without the most careful, and thorough examination of her papers, and giving to the testimony the best efforts of my judgment.” However, to justify destruction of ship and cargo, Semmes was at least as punctilious in finding ambiguity or inconsistency in the paperwork—efforts for which his enemies vociferously branded him a pirate.9
Yankee masters, in turn, applied every stratagem to avoid loss by hiding behind nebulous provisions of the law and false documents. One favorite trick was to have an official in a local British consulate certify the cargo belonged to one of their citizens, whether true or not. Upon examination of these certificates, Semmes pronounced them fraudulent and burned the ship. “The New York merchant is a pretty sharp fellow, in the matter of shaving paper, getting up false invoices, and ‘doing’ the custom-house; but the laws of nations . . . rather muddled