Semmes: Rebel Raider by John M. Taylor. Potomac Books (http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/Features.aspx ), 22841 Quicksilver Drive, Dulles, Virginia 20166, 2003, 128 pages, $15.96 (hardcover), $10.36 (softcover) (2005).
The two best-known naval battles of the Civil War are the clash of the first ironclads at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in April 1862 and the engagement between the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama off the French coast in June 1864. These battles represented two aspects of the Confederacy’s naval strategy to overcome the Union’s naval superiority: use ironclad warships to sink the Union’s wooden ships blockading Southern ports and commerce raiders to divert Union warships from the blockade to protect Union merchant ships. The strategy failed because the Confederacy did not have the industrial base to produce large numbers of ironclads, and the commerce raiders, of which the CSS Alabama was the best known, failed to draw many Union warships away from the blockade. Interestingly, many Civil War students would recognize the ship more than they would its chivalric commander, Capt Raphael Semmes, the subject of this biography.
John Taylor, son of Gen Maxwell D. Taylor and author of a number of books and articles, especially on the Civil War, has written an informative and lively biography, a concise treatment of his well-regarded, full-length biography of Semmes. As captain of the CSS Sumter and the CSS Alabama, Semmes, in just two cruises, struck fear into the hearts of Union merchant sailors and shipowners with the capture of nearly 100 Union merchant ships valued at $6 million—about 36 percent of the merchant shipping destroyed by the Confederate Navy. Southerners revered Semmes as a hero, and the Union sailors he captured generally respected him. However, Northerners, especially the merchants and shipowners financially hurt by his escapades on the high seas, reviled him as a pirate.
Born in Maryland in 1809 and orphaned at age 10, Semmes received his naval commission in 1826 and served on several naval vessels before the Civil War. During his shore duties, he studied and practiced law to supplement his naval officer’s pay. In 1841 Semmes purchased land near Mobile, Alabama, while he was stationed at the Pensacola naval base and ultimately came to consider Alabama his home. During the Mexican War, Semmes spent time in a blockade ship off the Mexican coast and ashore with Gen William Worth, Gen Winfield Scott’s deputy. His experience with artillery and keen eye for topography resulted in honorable mention by General Worth on three occasions.
In 1861 Semmes resigned from the US Navy and accepted a commission with the Confederate Navy. From June 1861 to March 1862, he commanded the CSS Sumter from the Caribbean, to the Brazilian and West African coasts, and finally to Gibraltar, capturing 18 Union merchantmen while being pursued by six Union warships. From August 1862 to June 1864, Semmes, in the sleek, black-hulled, British-made, and British-manned Alabama, roamed the oceans with impunity, outmaneuvering the superior Union Navy until that fateful June day. After losing the Alabama off the French coast, Semmes returned to the South, commanded the James River Squadron, and, in the last days of the Civil War, served as an army brigadier general. (The latter appointment made him the only officer to hold flag rank in two services.) The war over, Semmes’s fame soon faded, and he died in 1877. Yet in 1894, Kaiser Wilhelm II remarked that Semmes was the greatest admiral of the nineteenth century.
Although the book, written for Potomac Books’ Military Profiles series, is a mere 105 pages of text, the reader gets an excellent view of Semmes, the CSS Alabama, and commerce raiding on the high seas during the Civil War. From time to time, I detected a hint of partiality for Semmes by the author, but, generally speaking, Taylor provides a fairly objective look at one of the more famous (or infamous, depending on the reader’s regional point of view) naval commanders and certainly the most famous warship of the Civil War period. The only other criticism I have is that Taylor presents the epic clash between the Kearsarge and the Alabama in the book’s first chapter, which made reading the rest of the book somewhat anticlimactic. Still, I highly recommend this short biography to anyone interested in either the Civil War or naval warfare.
Dr. Robert B. Kane
Eglin AFB, Florida
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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