The Alabama and the Kearsarge:  The Sailor’s Civil War.  By William Marvel.  (Chapel Hill and London:  University of North Carolina Press, 1996.   Pp. x, 337)

As his ship sat in the port at Cherbourg, France, in need of a full overhaul, Captain Raphael Semmes of the CSS Alabama weighed his options.  Over the last two years, he and his crew successfully disrupted United States shipping around the globe having never put in to a Southern port because of the Union blockade.  They ran down, boarded, raided, and re-appropriated millions of dollars of cargo, equipment, and sometimes the ships themselves for the Confederacy without killing a passenger or crewman.  The federal navy chased, but did not catch the Alabama until the USS Kearsarge received news from the U. S. minister to Paris that the ship sat within easy reach in Cherbourg.  Sailing from Flushing, Netherlands, the Kearsarge trapped the ailing ship in port and forced Captain Semmes, whose vessel no longer had the speed to escape, to decide whether to be bottled up in port or to fight.  And as the old sea chantey “Roll, Alabama” says, “Many a sailor lad he met his doom…When the Kearsarge it hove in view… (p. 232).”

William Marvel thoroughly documents the history of both the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama prior to their fateful meeting in this encyclopedic tome.  Though ordering a new ship was a simple process for the United States, the Confederate naval agent James Bulloch carefully negotiated construction of its fleet in Britain under the guise of other nations so that both he and the shipyard owner complied with neutrality laws.  Beginning with the laying of the keel for each ship, the author charts the details of manufacture, the hiring of crews, and multiple adjustments the finished vessels to make them seaworthy. 

As the title suggests, sailors are the focus of Marvel’s study.  Using letters, diaries, memoirs, log books, and muster rolls he recreates the shipboard atmosphere of the officers and crew revealing fascinating specifics about daily life including procuring, preparing, and serving rations, functioning of social hierarchy among men, varying quality of housing arrangements, meting out of punishment, and facilities for personal ablutions.  The author informs us that in a time when the average height was 5’8”, the Kearsarge crew rose to only 5’3-3/4”.   The sailors ranged in age from fifty-four to sixteen.  He also reports that that the United States Navy “did not discriminate by race any more than by age (p. 27)” because 14 of the 143 enlisted men aboard that ship were African American.  However, his description of their roles as cooks, stewards, and in positions among the lowest rung of deck hands contradicts that assessment.  The men of the Kearsarge suffered more boredom during their service spending considerably more time in port for ship repairs while the Alabama’s crew engaged in an aggressive campaign on the seas.  Marvel depicts leisure hours as a peaceful time for reading, music, and games or an opportunity for trouble through alcohol, fighting, or desertion depending on the person.  He demonstrates the international character of both crews noting the many new recruits from foreign ports engaged to replace men who were ill, whose service ended, and who disappeared.

Excitement and apprehension filled the crews of both ships when Captain Semmes alerted Captain John Winslow of the Kearsarge through diplomatic sources that he intended to fight him off the port of Cherbourg.   Those counted present on June 19, 1864, became veterans of a naval battle celebrated throughout the northern United States.  Possibly unaware of its opponent’s chain armor, the Alabama attacked the Kearsarge firing on average one round per minute.  The artillery barrage landed a few effective blows, but inflicted minimal damage because of the ship’s defenses, the poor quality of Confederate ammunition, and mediocre accuracy.  As the two sailed in a corkscrew path across the water, the Kearsarge delivered a more deliberate and destructive response sinking the Alabama in roughly an hour.  Marvel suggests that “the Alabama’s principle service to the Confederacy appears to have been its effect on Southern morale (p. 265)” because its accomplishments offered hope for the rebel’s waning cause.  He calls the battle and its casualties unnecessary and suggests it was chiefly an effort uphold Southern honor.

Political and economic analyses take a secondary role in Marvel’s valuable contribution to maritime social history.  Researchers will find the appendix of the ships’ rosters especially useful.  The author appends a glossary of naval terminology, but the novice will require a supplemental reference.  Marvel’s rich descriptive narrative takes the readers aboard the ships and into the lives of the sailors who feel a bit like old friends by the end of the book. 

Texas Christian University                                                                               LeAnna Schooley

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The Alabama & the Kearsage: The Sailor’s Civil War.  By William Marvel.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.  337pp.

            As the title suggests, this book presents an account of the actions of two opposing naval vessels, the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsage, during the course of the American Civil War.  More importantly, the title also hints at the author’s intention of providing a detailed illustration of the daily life and culture of the sailor at war.  William Marvel succeeds in offering the reader a thorough examination of the toil and tedium that constituted life at sea for both Union and Confederate sailors.  Eschewing strategic and tactical analysis, as well as larger political and military contexts, Marvel’s narrative history exemplifies a “bottom up” approach toward examining the naval aspects of the Civil War.  In so doing, the author utilized the diaries, narratives, and memoirs of a number of officers and sailors that sailed on these vessels.  The resulting portrait of sailor life is far from romantic.  Rather, countless hours and days are consumed with cleaning the ship, burnishing the engine works, repairing the vessels, or simply waiting for action.

            Given the discrepancies regarding resources, manpower, and naval strength between the South and the North, the Confederacy soon arrived at a naval strategy that incorporated commerce raiders as an effective weapon against the Union.  Tiptoeing around the stringent neutrality laws promulgated by the British, the Confederates, through the efforts of Commander James Bulloch, succeeded in having several ships constructed by British firms located in Liverpool, England.  These ships navigated the trade and commerce routes across the Atlantic and seized and destroyed as many merchant vessels of the Union as possible.  The destruction and economic assault on Union shipping illustrated the Confederate effort to counter the tight blockade of Southern ports employed by the Union Navy.  The CSS Alabama, under the command of Raphael Semmes, was arguably the most successful of these commercial raiders, capturing and burning over sixty merchant ships from the North.  Furthermore, the Southern commerce raider also forced the Union Navy to redirect vessels away from the blockade effort in order to pursue and capture this enemy ship.  The USS Kearsage, one of countless new ships built and commissioned by Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, sailed under explicit orders to defeat the CSS Alabama and other commerce raiders.   

            Though the successful chase and capture of U.S. merchant ships provided considerable excitement for the sailors onboard the Alabama, long durations of inactivity, empty ocean views, and fearful storms, more accurately characterized the daily life of these men while at sea.  The author carefully details the culture of sailing during this period: monotonous toil and repair of the ship, strict adherence to officer-sailor hierarchy, frequent desertions while at port, musical diversions to entertain and boost morale, and the importance of relatively current newspapers from back home.  The need to keep order presented a constant challenge, mostly due to sailors’ reckless, inebriated behavior resulting from sheer boredom, especially when the vessels were anchored at various ports awaiting repair.  And the level of manpower aboard ship fluctuated as sailors became disheartened and disillusioned with the hardships and logistics of life at sea and the tedium that enveloped daily routine while in port.

            The CSS Alabama succeeded in posing a continual threat to U.S. merchant marine activity.  For over two years, the Confederate ship kept the Kearsage and other Union vessels alert and frustrated.  The author emphasizes the boldness of Captain Raphael Semmes, understood early on in the war due to his equally effective command of his preceding vessel, the Sumter.  However, the Kearsage, undergoing a change in command from Captain Charles Pickering to Captain John Winslow, finally succeeded in forging a victorious battle against an exhausted Alabama at Cherbourg, France, in June 1864. 

            The book, nonetheless, is concerned mostly with the minutiae of the life of the sailor.  The author effectively presents an interesting cultural history of naval life during the Civil War.  However, due to the narrowness of the subject, the reader wishing to grasp a larger understanding of the naval aspects of the Civil War will be rather disappointed.  Also, though the author provides a limited glossary of maritime terms, anyone not steeped in the vernacular of maritime history may be frustrated.  Still, a wonderfully descriptive account of the Civil War sailor, and his daily activities and challenges, emerges throughout Marvel’s work.

Bryan Cupp