The experienced warrant and petty officers that Bulloch provided and Waddell brought with him were mostly English and Irish, having never set foot on American soil, although several were Alabama veterans. Boatswain Harwood was an old Liverpool salt, a Royal Navy pensioner and member of the Royal Naval Reserves; he had been of particular assistance to Semmes in enlisting his crew. Bulloch requested that Captain Ramsay of Laurel and Captain Corbett of Sea King encourage their men to join. Both were Confederate sympathizers, and Ramsay was a commissioned lieutenant in the Confederate navy as well as licensed British merchant master.
Liquor flowed as the officers struggled to convince sailors to sign on. One seaman reported that a bucket of gold sovereigns appeared: “The officers took up handfuls to tempt the men on deck.” They were promised the best of living conditions, provisions out of ships captured, and prize money at the end of the war. Waddell told them that his orders were to simply destroy federal commerce; the vessel was not made to fight, and he intended to run away unless in a very urgent case. The Confederates anticipated that at least fifty men would sign on, which would prove sufficient until reinforcements could be enlisted from captured ships. They got less than half that.11
Midshipman Mason faulted Commander Bulloch as well as British and American officials for making it difficult to recruit sailors. “The men got frightened at the looks of things, did not like the way they had been deceived, in short got the old devil into them.” Some were “considerably riled.” Sea King quartermaster John Ellison, another member of the Royal Naval Reserves, had never earned a shilling in America in his life and did not wish to fight for it. England was his country and he was not ashamed to own it. Pointing to his reserves cap, Ellison stated: “If I were to desert from this, you cannot place any confidence in me.”12
Captain Corbett was said to be the worse for drink, upsetting his former crewmen even further by refusing to immediately pay three months’ wages for breach of contract as entitled by British law. And the political climate in England had changed, reflecting a marked loss of both sympathy for the Confederacy and confidence in Southern victory. Laws forbidding the Queen’s subjects to take service in a foreign navy, a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment, were being more stringently enforced. So, despite all inducements, most of the sailors insisted on returning with Laurel.
Captain Corbett and Captain Ramsay advised Waddell not to continue with so small a crew. It was too dangerous. Waddell conferred with his new first lieutenant, suggesting that they proceed south to Tenerife in the Canary Islands and communicate with Commander Bulloch to have a crew sent to them. But Lieutenant Whittle differed with his captain, as he would in the future. He knew each of the lieutenants personally; they were all “to the manor born.” He recalled the sad fate of the CSS Rappahannock, which a year before had gone into Calais for repairs and been held inactive ever since by stubborn French officials and Union blockaders. Repeating such a course, he counseled, would bring ignominious failure. “Don’t confer, sir, with those who are not going with us. Call your young officers together and learn from their assurances what they can and will do.” Waddell did convene a conference and the sentiment was unanimous: take the ocean. “Let those who hear the sequel judge the wisdom of the decision,” Whittle wrote years later.13
The captain of a ship of war was regarded as supreme in all things. He remained aloof and normally did not share details of the mission, much less request conferences with his officers on fundamental strategic decisions. Only Captain Waddell and First Lieutenant Whittle had been told where they were bound and for what purposes. In contrast to Waddell’s apparent indecision and lack of resolve, Bulloch would later note, the junior officers demonstrated that “pluck and that ingrained verve and aptitude of the sea which is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race.”14
Dr. Lining saw no chance of recruiting men in any port within many a long mile, and he did not wish to risk being detained or blockaded. They had plenty to eat—the ship was well provisioned—but nothing else. The wardroom was bare of furniture; staterooms had perhaps a washstand and a shelf but no lockers, no drawers, most of them not even bunks, not a chair apiece; and no storerooms existed for boatswain, sail, or gunnery supplies. But the holds were large and the wardroom and berth deck were spacious. They began striking everything below, putting it anywhere to clear the decks.
Just then, a vessel with the look of a warship appeared over the horizon bearing down upon them under topsails. They were armed only with swords and pistols, Enfield rifles, and two small saluting and signaling cannon. The big guns remained in crates disguised as “machinery.” “I, for one,” wrote Lining, “thought our cruise would be but a short one.” Hands were ordered to the anchor windlass as engineers rushed to generate steam. Laurel raised her anchor and bore away for the strange sail to lead her away, if possible, should she prove a Yankee. It was a gallant action on Captain Ramsay’s part, noted the doctor: “[I] began to think the anchor would never come in, & that my arms & shoulders would break first, but we worked away.” Suddenly the stranger sheered away setting English colors. Laurel returned and stood by while Shenandoah finally got under way. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, the weather rough with heavy swell running.
Letters home were hurriedly prepared. Captain Waddell wrote final dispatches including a note to Liverpool expressing doubts that he would accomplish all that was expected. Bulloch would recall this letter as “somewhat desponding.” The mail was sent across and Laurel was off under steam for Tenerife where she was to coal, proceed to Nassau, and then try running the blockade. Captain Ramsay and crew gave three cheers as Laurel passed, and they were returned with a will, wrote Midshipman Mason: “[We will] never . . . see her again, most probably, for we are bound on a cruise, which will last until the end of the war, provided, of course, we are not sunk in the meantime.” Mason superintended crewmen on the forecastle securing the anchor for sea under the eye of a lieutenant. It was his first watch on Shenandoah but “it was not the last, I’m happy to say.”15
A little before sundown the Confederate flag was raised—unnoticed, wrote Lining, by all except himself and the officer on deck. “We with our small crew, willing, however, to suffer & do all we could . . . started off on our cruise, our only trust being in a just God, and in our cause.” Having discharged the Portuguese fishermen (who were nearly swamped astern by the screw wake), Shenandoah stood clear of the land to the southwest. About 9 p.m., the engine was stopped, boiler fires banked, and topsails set. The doctor went to bed directly after supper, more tired, he thought, than ever in his life. The Confederate ensign flying at the peak was the second national pattern with the familiar battle flag for the canton and a pure white field.
Captain Waddell’s thoughts that evening of 19 October 1864 were not recorded. In a postwar report to posterity, he sounded more confident (and more poetic) than he undoubtedly felt at the time:
And the little adventurer entered upon her new career, throwing out to the breeze the flag of the South, and demanded a place upon that vast ocean of water without fear or favor. That flag unfolded itself gracefully to the freshening breeze, and declared the majesty of the country it represented amid the cheers of a handful of brave-hearted men, and she dashed upon her native element as if more than equal to the contest, cheered on by acclamations from Laurel, which was steaming away for the land we love, to tell the tale to those who would rejoice that another Confederate cruiser was afloat.
At almost the same moment and an ocean away, as autumn blazed the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, General Philip Sheridan routed Confederates under Jubal Early at the Battle of Cedar Creek, a bloody ending to the Second Valley Campaign. This beautiful breadbasket of the South