At the beginning of the War, the Confederate Navy, with only ten serviceable warships, was less than one-ninth the size of the Union Navy. How could a single Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Alabama, so terrorize U.S. merchant shipping companies and utterly frustrate one of the most powerful navies in the world?
By the end of February 1863, the Confederate
cruiser Alabama was operating off the coast of northern Brazil. That
month her crew boarded 31 ships that her Captain, Raphael Semmes,
believed to be Yankee merchants, but only five of them turned out to be
of U.S. registration. He burned three of these, bonded one, and ransomed
one. The U.S. merchant captains had learned to avoid the busiest sea
lanes where the Alabama might be lurking like a wolf for her next prize.
After re-coaling at a Brazilian port, Semmes set sail for Cape Town,
South Africa, a rich British colony and a more likely location for
intercepting Yankee merchant ships.
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