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Updated: September 8, 2025
Had Captain Winslow followed, he would have been compelled by law to remain twenty-four hours after the departure of the Alabama, so he took a station outside, determined that the cruiser should not escape him again. In this case, however, the precaution was unnecessary, for Semmes had made up his mind to fight the National vessel.
This sentence had reference to my denial of the Alabama and the substitution of the U.S. steamer Iroquois for that of C.S. steamer Alabama. The ingratitude of some people!! On the 16th April Captain Semmes resumes his diary as follows: Weather clear; wind light from the southward and eastward.
The legal advisers of the Governor seem to have reported favourably on Captain Semmes' request, for permission was given to take on board the requisite supplies, and the Sumter's coaling proceeded, though not with much rapidity. The morning of the 2nd August introduced on board a visitor of a new description.
On communicating with the prize-master in charge she proved to be the United States ship Golden Eagle, from Howland's Island in the Pacific Ocean to Cork for orders. The following particulars relating to these two vessels, are given in Captain Semmes' journal:
At last she fairly broke down altogether, was surveyed by a board of her officers, pronounced unseaworthy, and on the 24th of February Captain Semmes makes the following entry in his journal: "And so the poor old Sumter is to be laid up. Well! we have done the country some service, having cost the United States at least a million of dollars, one way or another!" And so she unquestionably bad.
In my despatch of the 4th instant, I instructed you to restore the Tuscaloosa to the Lieutenant of the Confederate States who lately commanded her, or, if he should have left the Cape, then to retain her until she could be handed over to some person having authority from Captain Semmes, of the Alabama, or from the Government of the Confederate States, to receive her.
The questions involved in the treatment of the Tuscaloosa are far more important and more embarrassing; and first let me state, with reference to the suggestion that Captain Semmes should have been required to admit or deny the allegations of the United States Consul, that no such proceeding was required.
The big eleven-inchers got home repeatedly as the range decreased; so much so that Semmes ordered Kell to keep the Alabama headed for the coast the next time the circling brought her bow that way. This would bring her port side into action, which was just what Semmes wanted now, because she had a dangerous list to starboard, where the water was pouring through the shot-holes.
Sheridan's cavalry having interrupted travel over the Virginia Central Railroad, I went by rail to Lynchburg, via the Southside Road, with Captain Semmes and eight or ten cadets on their return to Lexington with artillery horses pressed into service.
The strictest injunctions had been given both to Captain Bullock and Captain Semmes, to avoid doing anything that would by any possibility be construed into an infringement of either the municipal law, or the anxiously-guarded neutrality of England; and as the Foreign Enlistment Act clearly forbade the equipment of ships of war for belligerent uses, it was necessary that the new cruiser should leave England unarmed, and take her chance of capture, until some safe place could be found for taking her armament on board.
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