Just Finished Reading: The Rebel Raiders – The Astonishing History of the Confederacy’s Secret Navy by James Tertius deKay

There is one thing about books that delights me even more than a well crafted story or an interesting and novel idea. It’s the delightful feeling of wonder and surprise when a whole new world opens up before you as you turn the pages of a seemingly innocuous history book. That’s exactly the feeling, the thrill, I experienced reading this slim volume. As my regular readers know by now I love filling in the gaps of my knowledge and reducing my vast ignorance a little bit more with each book I read. This fascinating tale certainly filled a big gap in that knowledge!

As I’ve said before my knowledge of the American Civil War is fairly basic. When we covered it back in my school days the aim was, by and large, to look at how it affected us on this side of the Atlantic so we covered some of the motivations for the war, its impact on the British cotton trade and moved swiftly on to India. Over the years I’ve built up a little more information – major battles and so on – but haven’t really gone into things in much depth. So you can imagine my surprise to learn that not only was Britain (and the British government) involved in the war but that reparations were paid to the US because of that involvement. What surprised me even more was that my home city and port of Liverpool was intimately involved in some of the most notorious – though completely unknown to me prior to reading this book – events of that terrible conflict.

When war broke out it was immediately clear to the new Confederacy that the Union navy would blockade their ports in an attempt to wage economic warfare to which, with no navy to speak of, they could not respond. Before the noose was tightened however James Dunwoody Bulloch was despatched to Europe to buy or build ships to help the South in its cause. Despite an official backing for the Union and knowledge of Confederate activity in Liverpool and on the Clyde in Scotland the British government turned a blind eye to what soon became the obvious building of ships of war. After strenuous diplomatic efforts the British government finally acted but not before two ships had been launched – both from Liverpool – and subsequently named the CSS Alabama and CSS Shenandoah. These two commerce raiders alone caused millions of dollars worth of damage and basically destroyed all Union sea trade by the end of the war. The effect was so dramatic that there was even talk in Congress of actually going to war with Britain over its blatant duplicity! I was astonished to read that the Alabama was finally brought to heel and sunk in the English Channel (having no idea that the Civil War reached this side of the Atlantic) and that the Shenandoah only surrendered (actually some time after the war was officially over) by delivering herself and her crew into Liverpool harbour where she began her voyage years before.

What repeatedly surprised me throughout this book was that I was totally ignorant about any of these events. I know that it was by-and-large a war in another century in another country but I was astonished that a very important part of it happened here and apparently soured relations between the US and UK for decades afterwards (to say nothing of costing the UK government $15.5 million in fines). As you can imagine I’m going to be reading more about these events and look forward to sharing my thoughts with you. It still feels strange – and a little disturbing to be honest – that these events were a complete mystery to me until very recently. It’s not as if we’re talking about incidents in the dark and unrecorded past here. These events were recorded in major newspapers of the day as they happened – complete with illustrations and interviews. It felt like I had woken up in an alternate world were the history I thought I knew no longer existed. It was an exhilarating feeling which made my heart beat a little faster and my brain burn a little brighter. What else, I thought, am I completely ignorant about? Time, I replied to myself, to find out!

Oh, and if you haven’t already guessed….. I highly recommend this!