Confederate Shipbuilding in England

From the September 19, 2021, Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) ) "Confederate ships topic for BRCWRT" by George Morris.

Patrick Martin spoke  about Confederate ships made in England before the Baton Rouge Civil War Round Table on August 19.

Martin noted that at the beginning of the Civil War,  the Confederacy  did not have a Navy of facilities to construct and equip warships.  Confederate states did not have the industrial base of the North, so shipbuilding was undertaken on a much smaller scale.

Early in the war, Union General Winfield Scott drew up a strategy known as the Anaconda Plan to restrict  water access to Southern ports, which would  deny the Confederacy   of needed supplies.

This would be the blockade of the Southern coast.

Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory immediately embarked in a program that involved foreign shipyards to build ocean-going ships  to draw the Union Navy away from the South and disrupt international commerce going to the North.

Three commerce raiders were built for the Confederacy  in Liverpool, England.  The most famous of these was the CSS Alabama commanded by Captain, later Admiral, Raphael Semmes, which sank 64 Union vessels until it was sunk by the USS Kearsarge in the English Channel.

Semmes was rescued from the channel by a yacht and taken to England where he was received as a hero.

The other two ships were the CSS Florida and CSS Shenandoah.

After the war, England was made to pay damages by the ships built for the Confederacy.

--Old B-Runner