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Updated: June 3, 2025
Whatever goes on under the high and stony brows is guessed at. It is always a favorite local tradition that one or another of the blind lakes is bottomless. Often they lie in such deep cairns of broken boulders that one never gets quite to them, or gets away unhurt. One such drops below the plunging slope that the Kearsarge trail winds over, perilously, nearing the pass.
Both had declared that, if they ever met, the battle would not end until one of the ships went to the bottom, and each knew that the other would keep his word. Such a thing as surrender was not thought of by either. Semmes was confident of his ability to sink the Kearsarge.
Edswick homesteaded the field about the time the wild tide of mining life was roaring and rioting up Kearsarge, and where the village now stands built a stone hut, with loopholes to make good his claim against cattle-men or Indians. But Edswick died and Roeder became master of the field.
He believes now that the reports of her plating and armour were so much harbour-gossip, of which during his cruises he had experienced enough. Now the Kearsarge was an old enemy, constantly in pursuit, and her appearance produced, as Captain Semmes has written, great excitement on board the Alabama.
Ten minutes after the opening of the battle the spanker gaff of the Alabama and the ensign were brought down by the fire of the Kearsarge, whose crew burst into cheers, but the Confederates quickly hoisted the colors to their mizzen.
Coffin remained with the army, often riding to City Point and along the whole front of the Union lines, reading the news of the sinking of the Alabama by the Kearsarge, and the call of the President for a half million of men, seeing many of the minor contests, the picket firing, the artillery duels, and learning of the splendid valor of the black troops.
The captain and his officers dropped their swords into the deep; the men drove their oars into the bottoms of the boats. One spirit the spirit of the unconquerable Confederation of the Southern States animated all. Not a man who was able to support himself in the water, swam towards the Kearsarge. So sank the Alabama.
It was a clear, bright day, with a smooth sea. The fight took place about seven miles from shore. The two ships were pretty equally matched, each being of about 1,000 tons burden. The Kearsarge had the heavier smooth-bore guns, but the Alabama carried a 100-pound Blakely rifle. The Kearsarge was protected amidships by chain cables. The Alabama opened the engagement.
Granite-topped Kearsarge stood out in bold relief near by; Mount Washington and its attendant peaks, not yet named, bounded the northern horizon like a low, silvery cloud; and the principal heights of the Green Mountains, rising near the Connecticut River, were clearly visible.
Away up there we could see the lofty steeps and slopes of the summer pastures, and set low among them the chalets where the herdsmen dwelt. None of the mountains seemed so bare and sterile as Mount Washington, and though they were on a sensibly vaster scale than the White Mountains generally, I remembered the grandeur of Chocorua and Kearsarge in their presence.
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