Originally aired on October 18, 1996 - In part 112 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson recounts the exploits of the CSS Shenandoah and the havoc it wrecked on Union forces.
#112 – The Last Shot (The CSS Shenandoah)
Southerners have always been more martial than maritime. War on land has held more appeal than war at sea. Thus, when the sectional conflict came in 1861, the main shipbuilding facilities were in the North, the American merchant marine was Northern-owned, and most of the seamen were Yankees. A Confederate navy therefore had to be built from scratch.
Southern exploits afloat were largely the escapades of individual efforts against heavy odds. The most spectacular and successful activity of the Confederate navy was in commerce raiding. Initially, privately commissioned ships roamed the seas in search of quarry. By the midway point of the war, the Southern government was purchasing from European sources naval cruisers that were fast-moving and heavily armed. That brings us to the fascinating story of the CSS Shenandoah.
In the autumn of 1864, shipbuilders at Glasgow, Scotland, completed work on a new steamer designed as a China clipper. It was 222 feet long, 32 feet wide, framed in iron and covered with teak wood. The vessel possessed sail and an auxiliary 850-horsepower engine. At first christened Sea King, the ship packed eight heavy cannon and was capable of doing a then-fast ten knots per hour.
Confederate agents quickly purchased the Sea King and, in October, 1864, took possession of it off the island of Madeira. The vessel was renamed CSS Shenandoah. Her new captain was James Waddell, one of the most experienced and capable ship masters in either navy during the Civil War. Waddell was a six-foot North Carolinian with black hair and heavy mustache. His crew (mostly adventurers in their twenties) variously described Waddell as tough, stubborn, hot-tempered, energetic, and alert.
Within ten days, Shenandoah sailed around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and destroyed a dozen Union vessels before anchoring at Melbourne, Australia, for repairs. From there, Waddell cruised successfully for a while in the South Pacific before heading toward the large and unsuspecting whaling fleet working peacefully in the northern Pacific waters.
In spite of bad weather – especially ice and fog, Shenandoah created havoc among the whalers. Eleven ships struck their colors in one day’s action. Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles put American naval forces on alert from Maine to Texas and dispatched a large fleet to scour the Pacific in search of Shenandoah.
Meanwhile, in August, 1865, Waddell learned from a passing British ship that the was in America had ended. The commander turned his cruiser southward and departed the Aleutian Islands. The crew did not see land again for 122 days and 23,000 miles. Finally, at Liverpool, England, on the morning of November 6, 1865, Captain Waddell lowered the Confederate flag on Shenandoah.
The ship was at sea barely a year. Yet she traveled 58,000 miles and visited every ocean on earth. Shenandoah burned thirty-two vessels, sold six other captured merchantmen, and took almost 1,100 prisoners of war. Total damages inflicted by the Confederate ship would exceed $100 million by modern-day standards. Only CSS Alabama among Southern raiders did greater damage.
Somewhere around 1870 the British government sold the ship to the sultan of Zanzibar. It was given a third name, El Majidi. The steamer had an adventurous life until 1879, when it sank after hitting a reef in the Indian Ocean.
This was an inglorious end to a vessel that had the distinction of firing the last gun in the defense of the Southern Confederacy – and doing so seven months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.
