Find the Alabama: Thunderous Naval Combat—Valor and Honor: Part 4 of 5

  

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150 years ago today… one lucky misfire! CSS Alabama vs. USS Kearsarge

 And it is still there:

 

Had that shell, fired from a Blakely rifle on the CSS Alabama, exploded in the USS Kearsarge‘s sternpost, the outcome of the action would have been different.   The gun that fired it….

…was recovered from the wreck in the 1990s. 

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Via Mike

As the Kearsarge turned back toward shore, she was heading straight for the oncoming Alabama.

When the two ships were about a mile apart, the Alabama suddenly sheered to port and opened fire on her adversary with a starboard broadside. Semmes hoped to make some disabling hits, but at least to get the Kearsarge leaning away so he could run up alongside and grapple and board her. But the Confederate gunners overcompensated for their ship’s starboard list and the shells exploded harmlessly overhead the Kearsarge.

The Kearsarge waited until she was within a thousand yards, and then she began to fire. Because the Kearsarge was faster and more maneuverable, the Alabama was unable to get in close. Now the ships were firing starboard broadside to starboard broadside, circling clockwise around a common center. 

The range tightened from 900 to 400 yards, but the Alabama could not close on the Yankee warship. 

They circled seven times in this dance of death, booming away the whole time. The echoes reverberated for seventy miles across the English Channel, even as far as Bristol.

The eleven-inch Dahlgren guns began to take a heavy toll on the Alabama, splintering and slicing its wooden bulwarks and causing many casualties. A direct hit to the aft pivot gun, one of the two most potent Confederate weapons, killed or wounded all but one of its gun-crew.

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