The ship seemed perfect for conversion to a commerce raider, an enterprise that demanded speed, stealth and a capacity for staying at sea for long periods.Ī year later, in October 1864, Bulloch arranged for a surrogate to purchase the Sea King and for it to be sailed to Liverpool. Under sail, it had once covered 330 miles Under favorable sailing conditions, the propeller, to reduce drag, could be lifted from the water, and the “tea clipper” could reach speeds of up to 9 knots. The elegant vessel - 230 feet long, with a 32-foot beam - could sail under wind, or convert to steam and screw propeller. The Sea King had been built to provide speedy shipment of tea from Shanghai to England. More than auxiliary steam-power, and all the necessary arrangements for disconnecting and lifting her screw.” James Bulloch, the Confederacy’s lead naval agent in Europe, recalled the moment: “In the course of our search we caught sight of a fine, composite, full-rigged ship, with something

The saga of the Shenandoah began in the fall of 1863, when Confederate agents, searching Glasgow, Scotland’s waterfront, spotted the Sea King, a merchant ship that seemed ideal for conversion into a ConfederateĬommerce raider. But they were all part of the long, strange global odyssey of a Confederate ship called the Shenandoah. They evoke Herman Melville more than StephenĬrane. South Pacific tropical islanders, boreal dawns, perilous ice floes and distressed whaling ships hardly belong to our usual mental inventory of American Civil War images. Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

Sea of Gray by Tom Chaffin