CSS Shenandoah, formerly Sea King and later El Majidi, was an iron-framed, teak-planked, full-rigged sailing ship with auxiliary steam power chiefly known for her actions under Lieutenant Commander James Waddell as part of the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War.

Shenandoah was originally a British merchant ship launched as Sea King on August 17, 1863, but was later repurposed as one of the most feared commerce raiders in the Confederate Navy. For twelve-and-a-half months from 1864 to 1865, she undertook commerce raiding around the world in an effort to disrupt the Union's economy, capturing and sinking or bonding 38 merchant vessels, mostly whaling ships from New Bedford, Massachusetts. She finally surrendered on the River Mersey, Liverpool, United Kingdom, on November 6, 1865, six months after the war had ended.

Shenandoah is also known for having fired the last shot of the Civil War, across the bow of a whaler in waters off the Aleutian Islands.

History and mission

thumb|left|A pencil sketch of CSS Shenandoah, from the inside cover of a notebook kept by her commanding officer

thumb|left|Commander [[James I. Waddell]]

The ship had three names and many owners in her lifetime of nine years. She was designed as an auxiliary composite passenger cargo ship of 1,018 tons and built in 1863 by Alexander Stephen & Sons, Glasgow, Scotland, for Robertson & Co., Glasgow, to be named Sea King. The ship was intended for the East Asia tea trade and as a troop transport. While she was being fitted out at the builders, US representatives assessed the ship for purchase. After change of owner and a number of trips to the Far East carrying cargo and to New Zealand transporting troops to the New Zealand Wars, the Confederate navy assessed and purchased her from Wallace Bros of Liverpool. The purchase, made in secret, was completed on 18 October 1864, and the next day the ship was renamed CSS Shenandoah. The ship was to be converted into an armed cruiser with a mission to capture and destroy Union merchant ships. Liverpool was the unofficial home port of the Confederate overseas fleet, and Confederate Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch was based in the city. The city provided ships, crews, munitions, and provisions of war.

Sea King sailed from London on 8 October 1864, ostensibly for Bombay on a trading voyage. The supply steamer Laurel sailed from Liverpool the same day. The two ships rendezvoused at Funchal, Madeira, with Laurel carrying the officers and the nucleus of Shenandoahs crew, together with naval guns, ammunition, and ship's stores. Shenandoahs commander, Lieutenant James Iredell Waddell, supervised her conversion to a man-of-war in nearby waters. However, Waddell was barely able to bring his crew to even half strength, despite additional volunteers from the merchant sailors on Sea King and from Laurel.

The new Confederate cruiser was commissioned on 19 October 1864, lowering the Union Jack and raising the "Stainless Banner", and was renamed CSS Shenandoah. She also signed on 40 crew members who had been stowaways from Melbourne. They were not enlisted until the ship was outside the Colony of Victoria's territorial waters.

The rich whaling grounds in the Bering Sea between Siberia and Alaska had been a safe haven for Yankee whalers for most of the American Civil War. This prosperous whaling ended in the spring and summer of 1865 when Shenandoah arrived and captured 20 of the 58 Yankee whalers working there. These whalers were destroyed more than a month after CSA President Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, 1865.

On June 27, 1865, Waddell learned from a prize, Susan & Abigail, that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia almost three months earlier at Appomattox Court House. Susan & Abigails captain produced a San Francisco newspaper reporting the flight from Richmond of the Confederate government 10 weeks previously. However, the newspaper also contained President Davis' proclamation that the "war would be carried on with renewed vigor." He learned of the surrender of Johnston's army on April 26, and Kirby Smith's army on May 26, and most crucially of the capture of President Davis. Captain Waddell then knew the war was over.

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

Names and dates of 38 vessels captured by CSS Shenandoah, 1864–1865:

  • 1. October 30, 1864: the cargo bark Alina is scuttled south of the Azores, west of Dakar, near .
  • 2. November 6: the cargo schooner Charter Oak of Boston, Massachusetts, is burned in the mid-Atlantic at .
  • 3. November 8: the cargo bark D. Godfrey of Boston is sunk southwest of the Cape Verde Islands, near .
  • 4. November 10: the cargo hermaphrodite brig Susan of Boston is scuttled southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.
  • 5, 6. November 12: the neutral cargo ship Kate Prince of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is bonded for $40,000 at ; the prisoners are sent to Bahia, Brazil. The bark Adelaide is ransomed for $24,000 and released.
  • 7. November 13: the cargo schooner Lizzie M. Stacey of Boston is scuttled and burned near the Equator.
  • 8. December 4: the whaling bark Edward is burned off Tristan da Cunha, near .
  • 9. December 29: the bark Delphine of Bangor, Maine is burned at in the Indian Ocean, south-southwest of India.
  • From January 26 to February 17, 1865, repairs, crew recruiting and resupply was done at Hobson's Bay, Australia.
  • 10. April 3: the whaling bark Pearl of New London is burned at Lohd Pah Harbor , Pohnpei Island in Micronesia.
  • 11, 12. April 4: the whaling ships Hector of New Bedford and Edward Carey of San Francisco are burned at Lohd Pah Harbor.
  • 13. April 10: the whaling bark Harvest, nominally of Honolulu, is also burned at Lohd Pah Harbor; at 7:30 AM, Shenandoah departs Lohd Pah Harbor for the Bering Sea.
  • 14. May 28: the whaling bark Abigail of New Bedford is burned in the Sea of Okhotsk at , north of the Kurile Islands.
  • 15–20. June 22: in the Bering Sea, the whaling ship Euphrates, of New Bedford, is burned near ; the whaling bark Jirah Swift, of New Bedford, is burned; the whaling ship Milo is bonded for $46,000; the whaling ship William Thompson, of New Bedford, is burned northeast of Cape Narrows; the whaling bark Sophia Thornton of New Bedford is burned at ; and the brigantine Susan & Abigail of San Francisco is burned at .
  • 21. June 25: the ship General Williams of New London is burned near St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait at .
  • 22–27. June 26: the whaling barks Catherine and Isabella of New Bedford are burned in the Bering Sea at ; the whaling ship Gipsey is burned in the Bering Strait; the whaling ship William C. Nye of New Bedford is burned; the whaling ship Nimrod of New Bedford is burned near St. Lawrence Island; and finally, the whaling bark General Pike of New Bedford is bonded for $30,000, loaded with 252 prisoners, and sent off to San Francisco.
  • 28–38. June 28: on this last and busiest day of captures, the whaler is burned near Bering Strait Narrows; the whaling bark Congress of New Bedford is burned near Bering Strait; the whaling bark Covington of Warren, Rhode Island is burned in East Cape Bay near Bering Strait Narrows; the whaling ships Favorite of New Haven and Hillman, Isaac Howland, Martha and Nassau of New Bedford are burned in East Cape Bay; the whaling bark Waverly of New Bedford is burned near the Diomede Islands; the whaling ship James Maury of New Bedford is bonded for $37,600 in East Cape Bay and retained for transporting prisoners to the United States; and finally, the whaling bark Nile of New Bedford is bonded for $41,000, loaded with 222 prisoners, and sent off to San Francisco.

Surrender

thumb|Lieutenant John Grimball (1840–1922) of CSS Shenandoah by [[Georges Penabert, a French photographer]]

thumb|Editorial cartoon satirizing Lt. Cmdr [[James Iredell Waddell|James Waddell for still engaging in combat after the American Civil War was widely regarded as over]]

thumb|The River Mersey with Liverpool on the right bank. CSS Shenandoah surrendered approximately where the ship is in mid-river. The open sea is to the top.

thumb|Liverpool Town Hall. The last act of the Civil War was Captain Waddell walking up the steps.

Regardless of Davis's proclamation and knowing the unreliability of newspapers at the time, Captain Waddell and his crew knew returning to a U.S. port would mean facing a court sympathetic to the Union. News of Lincoln's assassination also served to further diminish any expectation for leniency. The crew predicted that surrendering to federal authorities would run the risk of being tried in a U.S. court and hanged as pirates. Commerce raiders were not included in the reconciliation and the amnesty that Confederate soldiers were given. Perhaps more importantly, Waddell would have been aware that the U.S. government no longer had to consider the threat of Confederate retaliation against Union prisoners while it determined his crew's fate. Likely not known to Waddell was that Captain Raphael Semmes of had managed to escape charges of piracy by surrendering on May 1, 1865, as an army general under Joseph E. Johnston. Semmes's former sailors surrendered as artillerymen.

Captain Waddell eventually decided to surrender his ship at the port of Liverpool, where Confederate Commander Bulloch was stationed.

Last lowering of Confederate flag

CSS Shenandoah sailed from off the west coast of Mexico via Cape Horn to Liverpool, a voyage of three months and over and was all the while pursued by Union vessels. She anchored at the Mersey Bar at the mouth of the estuary awaiting a pilot to board her to guide the ship up the river and into the enclosed docks. The pilot refused to take the ship, which was not flying any flag, into Liverpool; the crew raised the Confederate flag. CSS Shenandoah sailed up the River Mersey with the flag fully flying to crowds on the riverbanks.

The Liverpool Mercury reported the event on Tuesday, 7 November 1865:

After the surrender, CSS Shenandoah was berthed in the partially constructed Herculaneum Dock awaiting her fate. Once the international legalities were settled, she was turned over to the United States government.

Fate of the crew

After the surrender of Shenandoah to the British government, a decision had to be made of what to do with the Confederate crew, knowing the consequences of piracy charges. Clearly many of the crew originated from the United Kingdom and its colonies and were at risk of being considered pirates, and three had swum ashore in the cold November waters fearing the worst.

After a full investigation by law officers of the Crown, it was decided that the officers and crew did not infringe the rules of war or the laws of nations to justify being held as prisoners, so they were unconditionally released.