Civil War didn’t end at Appomattox Court House

When several southern states seceded from the Union in the early 1860s, the Confederacy “gained many fine naval officers, but few seaworthy warships,” wrote Mike Markowitz of the Defense Media Network. 

Stephen Russell Mallory, a former U.S. Senator from Florida, became “the Confederacy’s creative naval secretary,” Markowitz said. “He dispatched southern agents to Europe to covertly buy fast cruisers for ‘commerce raiding.’” 

Secretary Mallory

One of those ships was the Shenandoah, built at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1863 as a state-of-the-art clipper. She was 230 feet long with three masts and a coal-burning auxiliary steam engine.

 

In a remote cove in the Madeira Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, Confederate operatives loaded weapons and crew, Markowitz reported. 

Cmdr. James Iredell Waddell of Pittsboro, N.C., was named captain of the Shenandoah, and Lt. William Conway Whittle Jr. of Norfolk, Va., was assigned as executive officer. (Lt. Whittle was the brave skipper of the Nashville, who made history on March 17, 1862, by running the Union blockade of Beaufort Harbor.)

 

Cmdr. Waddell

“The Shenandoah was not meant to fight warships and never engaged any Union Navy vessels,” Markowitz said. “Her prey was unarmed merchant marine ships, in a Confederate strategy of ‘commerce raiding.’” 

“In the course of a 58,000-mile cruise, the Shenandoah captured a total of 38 ships. Despite taking more than 1,000 prisoners, not one was killed. Prizes that were not burned were packed with prisoners and sent into neutral ports,” Markowitz said. 

Prior to April 9, 1865, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Va., the Shenandoah had captured 12 merchant ships.

 

So, the vessel “did its finest work,” after Lee’s surrender, capturing 26 more ships and Yankee whalers – mostly in the fertile ground of the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska – during the spring and summer of 1865. 

On Aug. 3, 1865, Cmdr. Waddell learned of the Civil War’s definite end when the Shenandoah encountered a ship from Liverpool that was bound for San Francisco. 

Cmdr. Waddell lowered the Confederate flag, and the Shenandoah underwent physical alteration. Her guns were dismounted and stowed below deck, and her hull was painted to look like an ordinary merchant ship. 

Lt. Whittle sadly wrote in his diary: “No country. No flag. No home.” 

Rather than risk returning to the United States and possibly being tried in court and hanged as pirates, Cmdr. Waddell opted to surrender his ship to British authorities in Liverpool, England. He sailed around Cape Horn at the bottom of South America. It was a three-month voyage. 

The Shenandoah arrived in the Irish Sea and headed up the River Mersey to dock at Liverpool on Nov. 6, 1865. The crew raised the Confederate flag. Crowds gathered on the riverbanks to witness the surrender. 

The Confederate flag was then lowered for the very last time, under the watch of a Royal Navy detachment. Cmdr. Waddell addressed a formal letter of surrender to Lord John Russell, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 

Officers and crew of the Shenandoah were “unconditionally released” but hesitant to return to the United States. 

Cmdr. Waddell returned in 1875, when he became captain of a commercial steamer, the City of San Francisco. He carried mail and some passengers between San Francisco, Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand. Waddell died at Annapolis, Md., in 1886. He was 61. 

Lt. Whittle returned in 1876 as captain of the Old Bay Line, which provided steamboat service between cities on Chesapeake Bay. Later, Whittle helped form the Virginia Bank and Trust in Norfolk. He died in 1920 at age 79.