“I believe that we’ll have an opportunity to fight her,” said Captain Winslow. “So be prepared.”
At this, all of his sailors cheered wildly.
The Kearsarge was a staunch craft; she was two hundred and thirty-two feet over all, with thirty-three feet of beam, and carried seven guns; two eleven inch pivots, smooth bore; one thirty-pound rifle, and four light thirty-two pounders. Her crew numbered one hundred and sixty-three men. The sleeping Alabama had but one hundred and forty-nine souls on board, and eight guns: one sixty-eight pounder pivot rifle, smooth bore; one one hundred-pounder pivot, and six heavy thirty-two pounders. So, you see, that the two antagonists were evenly matched, with the superior advantage of the numbers of men on the Kearsarge offset by the extra guns of her opponent.
Most of the officers upon the Kearsarge were from the merchant service, and, of the crew, only eleven were of foreign birth. Most of the officers upon the Alabama had served in the navy of the United States; while nearly all of her crew were either English, Irish, or Welsh. A few of the gunners had been trained aboard the Excellent: a British training ship in Portsmouth Harbor. Her Captain—Raphael Semmes—was once an officer in the navy of the United States. He had served in the Mexican War, but had joined the Southern cause, as he was a Marylander. He was an able navigator and seaman.
The Kearsarge cruised about the port of Cherbourg, poked her bows nearly into the break-water, and then withdrew. The French neutrality law would only allow a foreign vessel to remain in a harbor for twenty-four hours.
“Will she come out?” was the question now upon every lip aboard the Kearsarge. “Will she come out and fight? Oh, just for one crack at this destroyer of our commerce!”
But she did not come out, and the Kearsarge beat around the English Channel in anxious suspense.
Several days later Captain Winslow went ashore and paid a visit to the United States Commercial Agent.
“That beastly pirate will not fight,” he thought. “All she wants to do is to run away.”
Imagine how his eyes shone when he was handed the following epistle!