VOLUME I THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CIVIL WAR BATTLES Jay Robert Nash A Advance (AKA: LORD CLYDE), Confederate blockade runner. Background: A steam-powered paddle-wheeler built by Caird and Company, Glasgow, for the Dublin and Glasgow Sailing and Steam Packet Company, the Advance was of iron construction, 236 feet in length, 26 feet in beam, with two oscillating steam cylinders (63" bore and 78" stroke) powering paddlewheels 30 feet in diameter. The Ad- The Confederate blockade runner Advance, captured in 1864 and vance was launched 07/02/62 at Glasgow, Scotland, under the name converted into a Federal gunboat, used in the Union blockade. Lord Clyde. After excellent trial runs in 10/62, the Advance saw suc- cessful commercial service between Glasgow and Dublin. Purchased by John Key of Scotland six months later, the ship was immediately it was condemned by a U.S. prize court. Its cargo was auc- and secretly transferred to the Confederate state of North Carolina for tioned off and prize money distributed to its Union captors. use as a blockade runner. After 17 successful runs through the Union The ship was purchased by the U.S. Navy for $120,000. It Blockade, 1863-64, the Advance was captured on 09/10/64 by the was then refitted with guns and sent to the North Atlantic USS Santiago de Cuba and converted into a blockade vessel. Squadron maintaining the blockade. The Advance joined a U.S. flotilla commanded by Rear The fast steam-powered paddle-wheeler Lord Clyde was Adm. David D. Porter (included in the squadron was the secretly purchased for the state of North Carolina by John Santiago de Cuba) in the attack on Fort Fisher, N.C. on Dec. White, special commissioner appointed by North Carolina 25, 1864. Ironically, its guns pummeled the very Confeder- Gov. Zebulon B. Vance. White paid $170,972 to John Key, ate shore batteries that had, months earlier, protected it as it who had ostensibly ordered the ship built in Glasgow for slipped in darkness past Union ships. Following the war, the commercial purposes, but who had been in league with White ship was rechristened the USS Frolic. J.P. Agnew of Alexan- to make the vessel available for Confederate blockade run- dria, Va., bought the ship in 1883 for $11,500 and sold it to a ning. South American firm two years later. Refitted for its secret missions, the ship was rechristened Also See: Blockade; Fort Fisher, N.C., 1864. A. D. Vance (a play upon Gov. Vance’s name) and came to be Ref.: Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic; Bradlee, Blockade Run- known as the Advance. It was skippered by Captain Willie, ning during the Civil War and the Effect of Land and Water Transpor- who thought it to be one of the fastest ships in the blockade- tation on the Confederacy; Browning, From Cape Charles to Cape running Confederate flotilla. With White purchasing a cargo Fear: The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War; of military supplies, the Advance was heavily laden on her Carse: Blockade: The Civil War at Sea; Cocaran, Blockade Runners of first run from England to Wilmington, N.C. The ship took on the Confederacy; Horner, The Blockade Runners; Jones, The Civil coal at Nassau and then, under the cover of darkness, sailed War at Sea; Robinson, The Confederate Privateers; Silverton, War- up the coast and slipped quietly into Wilmington Harbor, ships of the Civil War; Soley, Admiral Porter; Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running during the Civil War. delivering its precious goods. ______________________________ The Advance made 17 safe runs through the Union Block- ade between June 1863 and September 1864, bringing vital Alabama, CSS, 1862-1864, Confederate warship. supplies, arms and equipment to Wilmington. A typical cargo delivered by the Advance in October 1863 consisted of 2,000 Background: Capt. James D. Bulloch, a Confederate Navy agent stationed in England, met with officials of the Laird shipyards in pairs of shoes, 5,000 pairs of socks, 1,700 blankets, 30,000 Birkenhead, near Liverpool, in June 1861, and ordered the building of yards of flannel, 96 dozen cotton cards, and bagging and a steam sloop, paying £47,500 (including hull, spars, sails, boats, cord for the baling of cotton. On most outward-bound voy- anchors, cables and all equipment except armament; battery, magazine ages, the ship was packed with cotton and chemicals. tanks, ordnance stores and small arms added later, at an additional Loaded with cotton and turpentine, the Advance set sail cost of £4,216, for an overall cost of £51,716, the then rate of ex- from Wilmington on the evening of Sept. 10, 1864. It suc- change being $4.84 against £1, translating to $250,305.44). Built in cessfully eluded Union war vessels patrolling Wilmington secret over the period of a year at Laird, the vessel, intended as a Harbor, but at latitude 34 N., longitude 76 W., Captain Willie Confederate warship and raider of the open seas, was 220 feet long, spotted a ship bearing down rapidly on his position. Willie 32 feet breadth of beam, with a 14-foot draft. The ship weighed 1,040 glumly recognized the advancing vessel as the USS Santiago tons, was barkentine-rigged and had an average speed of 10 knots per de Cuba, which itself had once been a blockade runner and hour (according to its skipper, Confederate Adm. Raphael Semmes: “Under sail alone, with the wind abeam, she occasionally made 10 had been converted into a Union blockade ship. knots per hour, and her best performance was 11¼ knots per hour The Santiago de Cuba boasted 11 guns, which were all under sail and steam combined.” The ship’s propeller was constructed trained on the Advance. When its captain, O. S. Glisson, sig- so that it could be lifted out of the water, and when this was done, the naled for the blockade runner to surrender, Willie had no vessel appeared to be a sailing ship. choice but to run up the white flag. Glisson ordered a prize The armament later added consisted of six 32-pounders in broad- crew aboard the Advance and it was sailed to Boston, where side, a 100-pound Blakely rifle in the forecastle and a smooth-bore 8- Alabama (warship) - 4 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CIVIL WAR BATTLES The Confederate raider Alabama, a steam sloop with eight guns, was the terror of the Union sea lanes from 1862 to 1864. inch shell gun abaft the mainmast. Launched on 07/29/62, the vessel, had been sent to England by Confederate Secretary of the disguised under the name Enrica, steamed to the Azores, where it was Navy Stephen R. Mallory. A clever and resourceful man, met by Confederate supply ships. Armed and boarded by a crew of Bulloch was provided with considerable sums and with in- 149, captained by Semmes, the ship, on 08/24/62, was officially chris- structions to spend this money on well-built warships con- tened the C.S.S. Alabama. In September the Alabama embarked on structed by the esteemed shipbuilding firm of Laird in its raiding voyages, cruising the North Atlantic for two months, de- Birkenhead. Many important Confederate warships were con- stroying 20 vessels before sailing to the West Indies, avoiding capture at Martinique, then breaking the Union blockade at Galveston, Texas, structed by Laird, including the Florida, the Shenandoah and before sailing back to the West Indies to take two more prizes, then to the Stonewall. The most famous of these British-built vessels the waters off Brazil, where she captured eight more Union vessels. was the Alabama, which Bulloch ordered from Laird in June The Alabama then sailed to the East Indies, where it captured seven 1861, two months after Confederate batteries in Charleston more Union vessels. Semmes then sailed to European waters, going Harbor had pounded Fort Sumter into submission. to Cherbourg, France, for repairs on 06/11/64. The Union war sloop While the steam sloop was under construction it was known Kearsarge, summoned from Holland, waited outside the Cherbourg simply in the yards as “Number 290.” Agents working for Union harbor. On 06/19/64, the Alabama sailed out to meet the Union foe, Minister to England Charles Francis Adams reported the con- and after a fierce circling battle of an hour, the badly damaged Ala- struction of this mysterious sloop and Adams soon determined bama headed for neutral waters but sank. Semmes and most of his that the vessel was designed to be anything other than a peace- crew were rescued. ful ship of commerce. Adams went to British authorities, claim- The most celebrated Confederate sea raider of the war ing that the ship was intended to be a Confederate warship, was the much-feared Alabama, a roving war sloop that sailed making an official protest, and insisting that the ship be de- half-way around the world, taking dozens of prizes while tained. Meanwhile, the dashing Confederate Capt. Raphael confusing and vexing the Union Navy. Its legendary exploits Semmes was busy going about Liverpool and London recruit- created for the ship and its captain, Raphael Semmes, an im- ing officers and seamen for “Number 290.” Semmes had by age of invulnerability. Though large Union squadrons were then become famous as one of the most daring sea raiders in assigned to hunt her down and destroy her, the Alabama es- the small Confederate Navy. caped the naval dragnets time after time to reappear like a As skipper of the first Confederate sea raider Sumter, ghost ship, attacking and destroying more Union vessels.