Person’s Profile
Captain Raphael Semmes (1809-1877)
Description
captain of the Alabama
Biography
A confederate warship was built anonymously in the British shipyards at Birkenhead. When the Unionist government discovered this they demanded that it be detained in the yard, but in 1862, on the pretext of a trial run, Semmes and his crew escaped with it to the Azores where it was armed and proceeded to do immense damage to Unionist shipping, to the commercial benefit of the British. In 1864 the Alabama was sunk off Cherbourg but Semmes was picked up by an English yacht and brought to England. CMY referred to the Alabama affair disapprovingly in the Barnacle.
