19 June is the anniversary of the day in 1864 when the US Civil War came to the English Channel. Two steam sloops, one each from the Union and Confederate navies, fought each other off the French port of Cherbourg. The Union ship, USS Kearsage had bigger main guns and more accurate gunners. After an hour of combat the Confederate ship, CSS Alabama, had begun to sink and struck her colours in surrender.
Building CSN warships in the UK and France
Officially both France and the UK were neutral in the civil war. The UK had abolished the maritime slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery in the British Empire in 1833. But much of Britain’s industrial wealth was made from cotton, hence some UK industrialists sided with the Confederacy.
Confederate agents persuaded shipyards in both the UK and France to build warships for the Confederate States Navy (CSN). Five were built on the Mersey, four on the Clyde, two each in Bordeaux and Nantes, and one was built on the Thames.
Arming the CSA was illegal in both countries, so the shipyards disguised the ships as merchant ships, or armed merchant ships for the opium trade to China, or warships for Egypt.
The French and UK governments took little interest, so US agents spied on French and UK shipyards. Whenever US agents found a suspected CSN ship under construction, they presented evidence to the French or UK government and forced ministers to intervene to stop the ship going to the CSN.
CSS Alabama
John Laird of Birkenhead built three warships for the CSN. The wooden-hulled steam sloop Alabama was the first and the most successful. She was commissioned in 1862 and spent the next 25 months attacking Union ships around the Globe. Many of her officers were Confederates but many of her crew were British. She never visited a Confederate port.
The Union sloop Kearsage pursued Alabama for almost her whole career. Eventually Alabama sought dry dock and repairs in Cherbourg. Three days later Kearsage caught up with Alabama, took up position off Cherbourg and telegraphed for a second Union ship to join her.
Alabama‘s master chose to leave port and fight before the second Union ship could arrive. 19 June 1864 was a Sunday. A British steam yacht, the Deerhound, treated the battle as a spectacle and followed the engagement. When Alabama sank, Deerhound rescued her master and 40 of his officers and men.
19 officers and men from Alabama were either killed in combat or drowned when she sank. Several were British, including her assistant surgeon, David Llewellyn, who could not swim.
Other CSN ships
Most of the CSN’s commerce raider ships were built in Britain. CSS Florida was built in Liverpool and spent 21 months attacking merchant ships in the North and South Atlantic. CSS Shenandoah had been a genuine merchant ship built on the Clyde. But the Confederacy bought her in 1864 and converted her into a successful commerce raider.
The CSA ordered several ironclads from English, French and Scottish yards. All were detected by US agents, the sales were ordered to be stopped and all but one were sold off to the UK, Danish, Prussian, Peruvian and Japanese navies. One of those meant for Denmark slipped through and was commissioned as CSS Stonewall, but by the time she reached the Caribbean in May 1865 the Civil War was over.
The last CSN ship to surrender was the Shenandoah, a full six months after the end of the Civil War. When the Confederate armies surrendered Shenandoah was in the Pacific, but to avoid surrendering to the Union she sailed around Cape Horn and up the South and North Atlantic to surrender to the UK in Liverpool.
When the Shenandoah surrendered, most of her crew claimed to be Confederates. But it was noted that several of them spoke with Scottish accents. Like the Alabama, she drew much of her crew from Britain where she had been built.
French and UK complicity then and now
The French government seems to have been complicit in supporting shipbuilding for the Confederacy. Emperor Napoleon III seems to have known about at least two of the ironclads, and stopped their export only when his ministers were confronted and forced by the US Ambassador.
The UK government seems to have neither known nor cared. It, too, stopped the export of warships only when confronted and forced by US agents.
Little has changed. UK arms makers still accept orders from almost any government, even genocidal despots. As recently as 2019, Tory trade minister Liz Truss “inadvertently” allowed illegal arms exports to Saudi Arabia for use in the cruel war in Yemen.
In 1984 French minesweeper, the Circé, found the wreck of the Alabama off Cherbourg. Over the following two decades marine archaeologists recovered her bell, most of her British-made guns and hundreds of other artefacts.
Officially her wreck is a protected monument of French and US history. But she should also be considered a monument to unscrupulous UK arms firms accepting orders from almost any government, however unsavoury, that offers them enough money.
Hugh Jaeger 