J.D.R. Hawkins

One bullet can make a man a hero… or a casualty.

Archive for the tag “CSS Alabama”

They Ended Up in the Strangest Places

I found this article very interesting, so I wanted to share. It amazes me how people who lived during the American Civil War interacted, and what became of them after the war ended. This example discusses the life of one man who supported the Confederate cause.

Grave

CHARLES KUHN PRIOLEAU

The grave of a man who bankrolled the Confederate side in the American Civil War, and ended up costing the British government £3.3m in compensation to the victorious north, has been tracked down in a patch of brambles in a London cemetery. Charles Kuhn Prioleau, a cotton merchant born in Charleston, South Carolina, was based in Liverpool during the war, from 1861 to 1865. He disappeared from history in a bonfire of company records and correspondence after his firm went bankrupt, having sent supplies, funds, and blockade-busting ships to the Confederates. But his mortal remains have now been traced to Kensal Green cemetery by a US academic who is gradually unearthing the almost forgotten story of Confederate support in England, which takes in the highest ranks of British politics and society.

Tom Sebrell, a history lecturer at University College London, led a small gang of students into the undergrowth armed with pruning shears and cemetery burial records supplied by the Friends of Kensal Green. They literally fell over Prioleau’s broken headstone. His war efforts began as an attempt to save his business when the cotton trade crucial to the economy both of the southern states of America and the Lancashire mill owners collapsed. Prioleau’s contribution to the Confederate cause grew to sending supplies, weapons, and ammunition to those states, and finally to buying, equipping and crewing warships. Through agents, he acquired three of the most notorious privateers of the Civil War: the CSS Alabama and the CSS Florida, built on Merseyside, and the CSS Shenandoah, built on Tyneside. The first ship in particular, with a mainly English crew, caused such havoc that the £3.3m the British eventually paid the US government was known as “the Alabama claim.”

After the war, Sebrell says Prioleau simply vanished. His company, Fraser, Trenholm and Co., went bankrupt, almost certainly to pre-empt compensation claims. He has descendants in England, Africa and the US, but none knew where he was buried. One branch thought Belgium, another somewhere called Kelsall. The latter name led Sebrell and his team to Kensal Green. Prioleau was buried there in 1887 among grand neighbors including: the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Lady Byron, the poet’s wife; the novelist Anthony Trollope; and WH Smith of newsagents fame. But while some of their monuments are mini-cathedrals in grandeur, Prioleau’s, beside the Liverpool in-laws who moved to London with him, is comparatively modest. It certainly fails to match the millionaire style of his surviving home in Liverpool, now owned by the university. Also traced by Sebrell, the house features portraits of Prioleau and his wife, Mary, as well as elaborate Confederate decoration in all the main rooms.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/aug/10/grave-of-confederate-backer-found

(Article courtesy of The Southern Comfort, Private Samuel A Hughey Camp 1452 Sons of Confederate Veterans, President Jefferson Davis Chapter Military Order of the Stars and Bars, vol. 44, issue #2, February 2020)

 

Murals Saved!

GREAT NEWS! The CSS Alabama/Adm. Semmes mural that was in the east bound Alabama Welcome Centre at the Mississippi line has been saved from the scrap heap of memories. The Semmes family took possession of this heritage art and we can’t say thank you enough to this family for their efforts in preserving the legacy of our heroes. I know that lots of you, like me, made many a stop at the welcome centre just to see this mural. Plans are being made to display the mural in Mobile. Is this exciting or what?
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Courtesy of the 290 Foundation – according to President Ian Dewar:
“I received copy of the following message via the 290 Foundation’s  Facebook page. If this report is accurate all I can say is ‘Well done the Semmes family – and thank you!”
Ian Dewar
President, 290 Foundation (BVI) Inc.

CSS Alabama (And Other Civil War Battleships)


(Above: photos of USS Cairo at Vicksburg National Military Park)

On July 29, 1862, the CSS Alabama departed the shores of England where it had been constructed. The ship’s career was short-lived, however, because she was sunk in 1864. Originally launched as Enrica, the ship never anchored in Southern waters. She was dubbed the Alabama in August of 1862 to the jaunting melody of “Dixie” following President Jefferson Davis’commission of the vessel as read by the captain.

In 1865, the USS San Jacinto was wrecked. What remained of the vessel was sold at auction, and added to the US Treasury. The total sum was $224.61.

Many ships have survived the ages throughout history, and new wrecks are being discovered all the time. It wasn’t long ago that the turret to the USS Monitor was discovered, still containing the remains of the Civil War soldiers inside. The same goes for the CSS Hunley, one of the first submarines ever used, which vanished off the coast of South Carolina in 1864 after torpedoing the USS Housatonic.

I have seen a few remnants of boats during this era that still remain. One interesting artifact is located at Desoto Bend, near Omaha, Nebraska. Here, a museum houses what remains of a riverboat that sunk in the Missouri River around the time of the Civil War. There is also a wildlife refuge there where you can see a wide variety of water birds as they migrate during the fall.

Another fascinating relic resides at the National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The USS Cairo was sunk into the murky waters of the Yazoo River during the siege of Vicksburg, but all of the occupants managed to escape before she went down. Nearly a century later, the boat was retrieved, and artifacts are on display at the museum inside the park.

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