CSS shenandoahShenandoah
At its launch in Scotland in 1863, the CSS shenandoahShenandoah, which originally bore the name Sea King, was intended to be a British transport vessel;1 however, a US Confederate agent, through furtive and duplicitous means, was able
to purchase the Sea King for use in the Confederate Navy.2
After sailors hurriedly prepared the Sea King for war and renamed it the CSS shenandoahShenandoah, the vessel headed for the shipping lanes between the Cape of Good Hope and Australia
to disrupt American trade. The shenandoahShenandoah next moved into the North Pacific, where, in the summer of 1865, it preyed on American
whaling vessels.3
Unaware that the Civil War had ended in the aftermath of the Confederate surrender
earlier that year, the shenandoahShenandoah’s captain, Waddel, continued his mission into June of 1865.4 In August 1865, Vancouver Island governor, Kennedy, received a letter from the US
consul, which was included in the documents enclosed with this despatch, that informed
him of the shenandoahShenandoah’s continued warlike activities
despite the end of the war.
Also in August 1865, having now learned that the war had indeed ended, Waddel steered
the shenandoahShenandoah on a route back to England, and surrendered the ship upon arrival.5 At the close of the Civil War, the shenandoahShenandoah was the only Confederate ship to circle the globe, and was the last vessel to surrender.6
- 1. Shenandoah, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
- 2. Kennedy Hickman, Military History,.
- 3. Shenandoah, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
- 4. Ibid.
- 5. Ibid.
- 6. Kennedy Hickman, Military History,.