AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph. D. Hmerican Crisis Biographies Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. With the counsel and advice of Professor John B. McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania. Each I2mo, cloth, with frontispiece portrait. Price $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. These biographies constitute a complete and comprehensive history of the great American sectional struggle in the form of readable and authoritative biography. The editor has enlisted the co-operation of many competent writers, as will be noted from the list given below. An interesting feature of the undertaking is that the series is to be im to and partial, Southern writers having been assigned Southern subjects all to the Northern writers to Northern supjects, but will belong younger generation of writers, thus assuring freedom from any suspicion of war time prejudice. The Civil War will not be treated as a rebellion, but as the great event in the history of our nation, which, after forty years, it is now clearly recognized to have been. Now ready : Abraham Lincoln. By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER. Thomas H. Benton. By JOSEPH M. ROGERS. David G. Farragut. By JOHN R. SPEARS. William T. Sherman. By EDWARD ROBINS. Frederick Douglass. By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON. Judah P. Benjamin. By PIERCE BUTLER. Robert E. Lee. By PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE. Jefferson Davis. By PROF. W. E. DODD. Alexander H. Stephens. BY Louis PENDLETON. John C. Calhoun. By GAILLARD HUNT. " Stonewall" Jackson. By HENRY ALEXANDER WHITE. John Brown. By W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS. Charles Sumner. By PROF. GEORGE H. HAYNES. Henry Clay. By THOMAS H. CLAY. William H. Seward. By EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr. Stephen A. Douglas. By PROF. HENRY PARKER WILLIS. William Lloyd Garrison. By LINDSAY SWIFT. Raphael Semmes. By COLYER MERIWETHER. In preparation : Daniel Webster. By PROF. FREDERIC A. OGG. Ulysses S. Grant. By PROF. FRANKLIN S. EDMONDS. AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES RAPHAEL SEMMES by COLYER MERIWETHER Author of " History of Higher Education in South Carolina," etc. PHILADELPHIA GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY Published November, All rights reserved Printed in U. S. A. ACKNOWLEDGMENT IN the preparation of this work much help came from officials in the Navy Department in Washing ton, and from the force in the Congressional Library. Personally, the warmest thanks are due Professor W. L. Fleming, State University, Baton Eouge, Louisiana, and Dr. Stephen B. Weeks, Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C. Q 1 1 ^ A, A f\ CONTENTS CHRONOLOGY 9 I. EABLY LIFE AND EDUCATION . 11 II. REGULAR SERVICE : Loss OF THE "SOMERS" 32 III. IN THE MEXICAN WAR ... 45 IY. IMPRESSIONS AND INFLUENCES OF THE MEXICAN WAR .... 61 V. FROM THE MEXICAN TO THE CIVIL WAR 84 " VI. GETTING OFF WITH THE SUMTER " 103 VII. A DOZEN PRIZES .... 123 VIII. SECOND ESCAPE AND END OF THE " SUMTER" .... 148 IX. ON THE " ALABAMA" AMONG THE WHALERS 166 X. THE SINKING OF THE "HATTERAS" 190 XI. SOUTHWARD TO CAPE TOWN . 211 XII. IN EASTERN WATERS .... 239 " XIII. THE END OF THE "ALABAMA . 263 XIV. AFTERMATH OF THE BATTLE . 288 XV. LATER LIFE AND DEATH . .318 XVI. THE ALABAMA CLAIMS A SEQUEL . 349 BIBLIOGRAPHY 358 361 INDEX . ... CHRONOLOGY 1809 September 27th, born in Charles County, Md. 1826 April 1st, appointed midshipman. 1832 January 31st, ordered to examination. 1832 June 1st, warranted passed midshipman. 1833 March 22d, appointed in charge of chronometers. 1835 July 25th, sent to Constellation as acting master. 1837 February 9th, promoted to Lieutenant. 1837 May 5th, married Anne Elizabeth Spencer. 1838 July 30th, sent to Norfolk Navy Yard. 1841 May 17th, transferred to Pensacola Navy Yard. 1843 August 10th, commands Poinsett. 1845 September 9th, assigned to home squadron. 1846 December 8th, loss of Somers. 1848 January 28th, commands Electro,. 1849 October 12th, detached to await orders. 1855 September 14th, promoted to commander. 1856 November 26th, lighthouse inspector. 1858 September 24th, secretary of lighthouse board. 1861 February lltb, member of lighthouse board. 1861 February 15th, resignation from navy accepted. 1861 June 3d, commissions Sumter. 1861 June 30th, escapes to the high aeas. 1861 July 3d, makes first capture, Golden Rocket. 1861 November 23d, escapes from St. Pierre harbor. 10 CHKONOLOGY 1862 January 18th, reaches Gibraltar on Sumter. 1862 April llth, turns over Sumter to midshipman. 1862 August 24th, commissions Alabama. 1862 September 5th, Alabama s first capture. 1862 November 18th, Alabama enters her first port. 1863 January llth, sinks the Hatteras. 1863 June 20th, commissions tender, Tuscaloosa. 1863 August 5th, arrives at Cape Town. 1863 November 18th, arrives at Souriton. 1863 December 21st, arrives at Singapore. 1864 March 20th, again arrives at Cape Town. 1864 June llth, arrives at Cherbourg. 1864 June 19th, Alabama sunk by Kearsarge. 1864 October 3d, embarks for America. 1865 January 2d, leaves Mobile for Richmond. 1865 February 10th, notified of appointment as Rear Admiral. 1865 February 18th, assumes command James River Fleet. 1865 April 2d, ordered to retreat with Lee. 1865 May 1st, paroled in North Carolina. 1865 December 15th, arrested in Mobile. 1866 April 6th, released in Washington. 1866 October 24th, appointed to Louisiana State Seminary. 1867 June 18th, resigns from Louisiana State Seminary. 1869 Publishes book on Sumter and Alabama. 1877 August 30th, died in Mobile. 1900 June 27th, his monument unveiled in Mobile. 1909 September 27 th, celebration of the centennial of his birth. RAPHAEL SEMMES CHAPTEE I EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION AT an awful crisis in the history of a great land, at a fateful turn in the path of humanity s progress, Eaphael Semmes looms up as a portentous figure. He was chief among those few daring spirits from the South that swept the United States merchant flag from the ocean, and he was the leader on his side in that contest on the waters that was the cul mination in the transition of the navies of the nations from sail to steam. He was preeminent in proving what havoc could be wrought among the ships of peace through the supplementary aid of Watt s invention. There had been gallant cruisers before him, as bold and as resourceful, but none single- handed had ever accomplished such wondrous results, and his career has never been equaled since his time, and perhaps can never be duplicated in this period 12 EAPHAEL SEMMES of air craft and wireless telegraphy. He did his momentous work in three years, but the character that guided the destiny of the event, and the mind that moulded the means to an end, can be fairly seen only through the study of his days. Through the data provided by the capable hands of members of his we learn of his and family, ancestry boyhood ; through his own pen, through that of others, and through official records, we know of his subsequent career. Eaphael Semmes, of French-American descent, and of Catholic family, was born in Charles County, Maryland, on September 27, 1809, just seven months and two weeks after the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the most towering personality in that same titanic upheaval in which Semmes won his fame. The father of Eaphael Semmes was Eichard Thompson Semmes, according to the best authority "fifth in descent from the first American ancestor, Benedict Joseph Semmes, of Normandy, Prance, who came over with Lord Baltimore in 1640," in the Ark and Dove. Eaphael s " mother was Catherine Hooe Middleton, a descendant of Arthur Middleton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence." There was only one other child of this union, Samuel Middleton Semmes, who afterward be- EAELY LIFE AND EDUCATION 13 came a well-known lawyer in Cumberland, Mary land, and it was in the office of this brother that Eaphael read law and began that legal training that was to be of such service to him in his numer ous international verbal battles at the various ports he visited with the Sumter and Alabama. The mother died early, and the father passed away when Eaphael was only ten years old, leaving the two boys almost penniless. Both were sent to an uncle, Eaphael Semmes, in Georgetown, District of Columbia. In his sketch of Admiral Semmes at the celebration of the centennial of his birth, DeLeon, the Alabama author, states that young Eaphael worked in his uncle s wood-yard, a likely, certainly a possible thing for him to have done. He must have attended some of the private schools in the city as there was no thorough public system of schools then in operation in that locality. The usual subjects for the youth of his day received his care, all and arith elementary ; chiefly reading, writing metic. But either before removal to the city or on visits to his old home afterward, he got some of his development in the best of all ways, in the free, open- air life in the country. Here was room for untram- meled growth in spontaneous rivalry with his play mates, hardening his constitution, toughening his 14 EAPHAEL SEMMES fiber, sharpening his brain and bringing forth his power of initiative. Long years afterward when Raphael was in prison in Washington after the close of the strife, it was a tender remembrance that came over him as he looked from his window on his native state, Maryland, and on "the Potomac in whose waters I used to swim and fish as a boy." But even had the opportunities been most abounding, the lad s schooling was too short for him to have ac quired more than the primal rudiments as he was " appointed a midshipman from Maryland" by President Adams on April 1, 1826.