At Cape Town Semmes was troubled a little by “the stereotyped American consul; half diplomat, half demagogue.” The American consuls were in chase wherever he entered a port, but the truth is that they were rarely able to do more than accumulate facts that were eventually handed in along with the bill for damages when the Alabama claims got into court in 1871.
Before reaching Cape Town a prize was turned into a cruiser, and she was of some little consequence in the Cape waters, but did nothing as compared with what the dashing Read accomplished on the American coast.
From the Cape of Good Hope Semmes went to the East Indies, where he found a harvest of prizes, came back to the Cape, and eventually went to Europe; and late at night, on the 10th of June, 1864, the Alabama reached Cherbourg, France, which was her last port, for there the Kearsarge, Capt. John A. Winslow, caught her.
John A. Winslow.
From a photograph.
It is to the credit of Captain Semmes that he had no wish to escape the Federal ship, though he says that had he known that the Kearsarge had been armored by placing iron cables on her sides opposite her machinery he should not have done so. Ship for ship and crew for crew, the Alabama was inferior to the Kearsarge by a greater extent than has usually been told in history. In size they were practically the same—1,031 tons for the Kearsarge and 1,016 for the Alabama, but the Kearsarge was the swifter ship of the two. The Alabama carried eight guns, and she fired 328 pounds of metal at a broadside. The Kearsarge carried seven guns, and fired 366 pounds at a broadside; but these figures do not fully tell the superiority of the guns of the Kearsarge, for her two pivots were eleven-inch Dahlgrens, a style of gun that, at the range of this battle, and in a fight between unarmored ships, were far superior to the 100-pounder Blakely and the eight-inch (sixty-four-pounder) smooth-bore on the Alabama. And, then, in the crews the Kearsarge carried 163 men, chiefly Americans, to the Alabama’s 149, almost exclusively Europeans. The officers of the Alabama were about the only ones who had any sentiment in the fight; the men before the mast were at best filibusters—as ragged a crew (mentally) as that of the Bonhomme Richard. That they should have made any fight at all was due to the training received from men who had been reared under the old flag. Another great difference was in the powder, for that on the Alabama was very old and bad.
The Alabama remained in Cherbourg until Sunday, June 19, 1864, when soon after 9 o’clock Semmes headed her out of the harbor. The French ironclad Couronne went along to see that the fight took place three sea miles from shore, and a steam yacht, the Deerhound, followed to give her owner and his family a chance to see a sea battle. The shores were soon covered with equally eager if less fortunate spectators, trains being run from Paris to bring people to the fight. And the sympathy of nearly all the spectators was with the Confederate ship.
Captain Winslow steamed off shore until seven miles from land, and then at 10.50 o’clock turned and drove the Kearsarge straight at the Confederate cruiser. At 10.57, when the ships were yet 1,800 yards apart, the Alabama yawed enough to open fire with a broadside. It was aimed rather worse, perhaps, than that which the Oneida fired into the Florida off Mobile, for the shot flew over the Kearsarge. Two more broadsides were fired from the Alabama as the Kearsarge approached head on, but when the Kearsarge, at a range of 900 yards, was seen to be heading to run across the Alabama’s stern, the Alabama started off in a way that set the two ships running “in a circle against the sun”—starboard side to starboard side, gradually approaching nearer and nearer, while the current swept them slowly down the coast.
