For these Southerners, the ship symbolized the future in their determination to emulate her famous sisters and to achieve retribution, victory, and peace. The cruise would be the subject of history “successful or not,” concluded Lieutenant Grimball. But the CSS Shenandoah was not a man-of-war yet—dangerously undermanned, guns not mounted, chaos on deck and below, an untested foreign crew, vulnerable to both the enemy and the weather, she sallied forth into the Atlantic with more hope than substance.
“Do . . . the Greatest Injury”
Fifteen months before Shenandoah’s commissioning—18 August 1863—a notice appeared in the North British Daily Mail: “Messrs. A. Stephen & Sons launched from their new shipbuilding shed at Kelvinhaugh, another of their wood and iron ships.” The Sea King was described as a fine screw steamship of about 1,200 tons, certified class A1 at Lloyd’s of London. She was the first clipper ship with iron frames and wooden planking (called a composite ship), and also the first steamer specially constructed to compete with “the fastest ships in the trade direct from China to London, in bringing home the first teas of the season.” Confederate commander James Bulloch and Lieutenant Robert Carter had been searching the north bank of the River Clyde for a steamer to purchase when they noticed Sea King in the bustle of fitting out for her first commercial voyage. She appeared to be just what they were looking for, but they got only a quick look. Sea King also caught the attention of retired police detective Matthew Maguire working for the energetic American consul in Liverpool, Thomas H. Dudley. He reported her as a potential rebel raider needing close observation.1
Georgian James Dunwoody Bulloch was forty years old, a former U.S. Navy officer, merchant master, and businessman with extensive experience, formidable organizing talents, and fierce determination. He served as chief purchasing agent in England for the Confederate navy department from his headquarters in the pro-Southern shipping and shipbuilding city of Liverpool, where, a contemporary opined, more Confederate flags flew than in Richmond. Bulloch’s half brother, Irvine Stephens Bulloch, was sailing master on Shenandoah. (The Bullochs’ sister, Martha, married Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and bore the future president.)
Reporting directly to Confederate secretary of the navy Stephen Mallory, James Bulloch accomplished more than any other Confederate on foreign soil. Against persistent Union espionage and intense diplomatic pressure, he launched the most successful raiders—Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah—along with blockade runners crammed with hundreds of tons of arms and equipment. He contracted the Laird Shipyards to build two iron-hulled steam warships, each with an iron beak—the “Laird rams.” Bulloch had been slated to command Alabama but reluctantly relinquished the position upon request of Mallory, who considered him indispensable in his current position. U.S. minister to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams wrote that Bulloch and associates were more effectively directing hostile operations than if they had been in Richmond. “In other words, so far as the naval branch of warfare is concerned, the real bureau was fixed at Liverpool.” But Mallory, an experienced maritime lawyer from Key West, Florida, played a vital role as arguably the most effective of Jefferson Davis’ cabinet officers. Mallory served before the war as U.S. senator and chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs where he was a vigorous proponent of naval modernization. Davis, whose talents and interests lay almost exclusively in military affairs, left the navy to Mallory.2
Early in 1861 Raphael Semmes had advised a prominent Southerner, “If you are warred upon at all, it will be by a commercial people, whose ability to do you harm will consist chiefly in ships, and shipping. It is at ships and shipping, therefore, that you must strike. . . . Private cupidity will always furnish the means for this description of warfare.” It would be required, maintained Semmes, only to place licensed privateers under sufficient legal constraint to prevent degeneration into abuse and piracy. Even New England ships and New England capital would serve the Confederacy for profit. Privateering would be analogous to the militia system on land.3
The Confederate congress duly authorized privateers, and in response President Lincoln threatened to license his own but did not carry it out. There were virtually no Southern merchant ships on the seas to capture, and Lincoln needed every available vessel to blockade their harbors. A few rebel privateers made it to sea in 1861 with short-lived success. Europeans denied both sides permission to bring captured vessels into neutral ports for adjudication and sale, while the blockade increasingly restricted Southern harbors. For the first time in three hundred years, the business was not profitable.4
Mallory was an innovator, as demonstrated in his adoption of ironclad warships and torpedoes (mines). So, he determined to buy or build vessels configured solely for commerce destruction and fund them from the treasury. Florida and Alabama had been prototypes, built from the keel up and magnificently suited for the purpose. But starting with Raphael Semmes’ little Sumter in 1861, most Confederate raiders had been civilian ships converted, armed, and commissioned as warships—a practice not prevalent since the emergence of the big-gun warship centuries before. Now the advantages of fast sail were merged, in a single vessel of relatively low cost, with steam propulsion and minimum armament against a vast merchant fleet almost exclusively under sail and virtually unarmed—an overwhelming tactical superiority.
On 18 July 1864 Mallory wrote from Richmond to Bulloch: “The loss of Alabama was announced in the Federal papers with all the manifestations of universal joy which usually usher the news of great national victories, showing that the calculating enemy fully understood and appreciated the importance of her destruction. You must supply her place, if possible.” A month earlier, Lieutenant Whittle and Lieutenant Grimball had been in Cherbourg as Alabama prepared for battle. They offered their services but were turned down; it would have been a violation of French neutrality to take on new men. Along with thousands of others, the future Shenandoah officers watched from the bluffs as guns of the USS Kearsarge destroyed and sank Alabama.5
Secretary Mallory desired an iron ship of from 600 to 1,200 tons, with powerful engines and room for one or two guns. It should be fast under steam and sail but “unpretending to man-of-war airs and graces.” It might be built for commercial purposes such as the fruit or opium trade or as a yacht. The vessel must carry supplies—especially ordnance stores—for a global cruise. There would be no access to home ports; the ability to refit, resupply, and recruit in foreign harbors could be restricted by international law and politics. As Bulloch had noted, “[The] flag was tolerated only, not recognized.” Concluded Mallory, “You will regard it but as a suggestion and as evidence of my anxiety to get cruisers to sea, rather than as a direction. Perhaps you can do better. Do not wait for instructions, but do the best you can under the circumstances.”6
For once Bulloch had ample funds after being required by British authorities—motivated by vociferous Union threats of war—to sell the Laird rams to the Royal Navy rather than see them delivered to Confederate service. This was a grievous setback and one of his most severe disappointments; he was determined to put the proceeds to good use but had few options. The British Foreign Enlistment Act, prohibiting belligerents from acquiring war vessels within the realm for a conflict in which Great Britain was neutral, was being evermore strictly enforced. He no longer could have