Artifacts from CSS Alabama at Charleston, SC
Jack Linthicum
part of the Phildelphia Art Museum exhibition noted in a separate
posting.
http://www.nationaltrust.org/Magazine/story/index.htm
www.preservationonline.org
The French Connection
A deadly clash between Union and Confederate warships off the coast of
Normandy left behind artifacts and art.
Story from the magazine by Margaret Foster / Jan. 2, 2004
It could have been the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Hundreds of wood crates stretched out in long, straight rows within a
cavernous warehouse known as Building 46 in the Navy Yard in
Washington, D.C. On a warm autumn morning, I stalked its dim recesses,
past brass ship bells, huge wood steering wheels, and nailed crates
stacked high above my head, searching for the remains of one of the
Civil War's most notorious ships, the C.S.S. Alabama, a Confederate
raider lost on an unlikely battlefield off the coast of France.
The sinking of the Alabama on June 19, 1864, was big news. Hundreds of
journalists, in Cherbourg for the opening of a new casino, witnessed
the battle from nearby hills. Reports reached the Paris studio of
artist Edouard Manet, who, using newspaper articles and his
imagination, quickly painted "The Battle of the U.S.S. Kearsarge and
the C.S.S. Alabama" and hung it in a print shop window in the city.
Manet's oversized painting揺is first of the ocean擁nspired Claude
Monet, Gustave Courbet, Berthe Morisot, and other Impressionist
artists to head to Normandy to paint in coastal resorts like Trouville
and Boulogne. (Manet's sea paintings, along with those he inspired,
have been assembled for the first time in an exhibit at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, which runs from Feb. 15 through May 31,
2004.)
In the 22 months it roved the seas, from Brazil to Singapore, the
Alabama obliterated 65 Union merchant ships. The 220-foot-long vessel,
fitted with eight cannons and a retractable smokestack, was built for
Rafael "Old Beeswax" Semmes, an Alabama captain with a waxed handlebar
mustache (hence his nickname) and a track record for burning enemy
ships. The vessel was constructed in secrecy in Liverpool, England,
under the name 290. On July 29, 1862, Semmes told customs officials he
was taking the finished ship out for a test run. Packed with ladies
and gentlemen who were treated to champagne and lunch, the 290 left
Liverpool for a "short excursion." At the mouth of the Mersey River,
Semmes unloaded the surprised merrymakers into a tugboat and
high-tailed it 2,000 miles southwest to the Azores, where guns,
ammunition, and a crew were waiting. Within two months, the
Alabama羊enamed for its captain's home state揺ad burned 19 Union ships
without firing a shot: Semmes's ploy was to raise a British flag,
board the ship, seize its goods, take prisoners, and set it afire. The
New York Times and Harper's Weekly dubbed Semmes a pirate, but the
South celebrated him as a hero.
The Union, out millions of dollars, offered a $300,000 reward for
sinking its nemesis and $500,000 for its capture. After almost two
years at sea, Semmes paused in the Cherbourg harbor to repair the
Alabama's hull and take on fresh ammunition. Spotting the elusive
vessel, Capt. John Winslow of the 201-foot-long U.S.S. Kearsarge
blocked its exit. Winslow, who had been Semmes's classmate at the U.S.
Naval Academy, ordered his crew to fortify the side of the Union ship
by stringing chains across a 50-foot section and covering them with
inch-thick planks.
A few minutes before 11:00 a.m., the Alabama fired the first shot. One
shell hit the Kearsarge's unprotected stern post預 potentially fatal
wound傭ut didn't explode. The Alabama was less fortunate. "Nearly
every shot from our guns was telling fearfully on the Alabama,"
Winslow reported. "I saw now that she was at our mercy, and a few more
guns, well directed, brought down her flag." By noon, the Alabama had
slipped beneath the waves, its captain and crew rescued by a British
yacht and Kearsarge rowboats. (Nine sailors died on deck, and 10
drowned.) Of the 140 survivors, about 40 escaped with Semmes to
England.
In 1984, when the French minesweeper Circe discovered an unknown wreck
at the bottom of the English Channel, six miles from Cherbourg. Divers
retrieved a telltale brass steering wheel inscribed in French: "God
Helps Those Who Help Themselves," and three years later, the French
government announced it had found the Alabama. Yet because both France
and the United States claimed the wreck as their own, a diplomatic
touch was needed before excavation could continue. For help, the
French turned to Ulane Bonnel, an American maritime historian and
former WAVE whose marriage to a French naval officer had led her to
settle in Paris.
To find out more about recent discoveries at the wreck site, I
traveled to Normandy last summer. In Cherbourg, I met Madame Bonnel,
the stately, loquacious president of L'association CSS Alabama,
founded in 1988. It was clear on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line
her sympathies lay: "My parents never spoke of the Civil War with any
satisfaction," the Texas native told me primly. Now 83, she has
devoted the past two decades to raising money to excavate the wreck,
even donating some of her own. In 1995, she helped broker an agreement
between the two governments that allowed her group to oversee the
project. The site is both well known and well protected. "It has never
been pillaged for the good reason that it's 60 meters [185 feet] down,
and it's located in a major tidal current," Bonnel said. The tides
churn the sand on the ocean floor so forcefully, she said, that "what
you see one day, you may not see for the next month. Nothing is simple
about the Alabama."
The following morning, Bonnel and I boarded a small boat to visit the
site. As the roaring engine idled, Bonnel shouted, "We're over the
Alabama now," but when a member of the crew shot me a sheepish glance,
I suspected that after only 10 minutes, we were not yet six miles from
Cherbourg. Still, I tried my best to picture the smoke and hear the
thud of cannon, but what I recognized most was the green tint of the
waves from Manet's famous painting.
After 20 years of summer dives that have recovered hundreds of items,
conserved in the Navy Yard and a lab in Charleston, S.C., Bonnel's
group and its American counterpart, the CSS Alabama Association (USA),
want one more year to bring up crucial artifacts. "The principal goal
will be to excavate the crew's quarters, in order to learn a lot more
about life aboard that ship," Robert Edington, president of the
three-year-old nonprofit, based in Mobile, Ala., told me when I
returned to the States. Edington says that last dive will take place
in 2005.
But they will have to do it without further help from the U.S. Navy,
which owns the wreck. Since 1993, the U.S. Department of Defense's
Legacy Resource Management Program has given $1,277,000 toward the
conservation of artifacts from the Alabama. "At this time, there are
no plans to go back at all," says Barbara Voulgaris, cultural
resources manager at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C.
"The Alabama folks really need to look elsewhere for funding."
In the Navy's warehouse I finally found the pieces of the Alabama,
with the assistance of Claire Peachy, a conservator at the Navy Yard.
Peachy led me through Building 46 to a row of white metal lockers,
where she showed me 12 dinner plates divers retrieved last year. I was
amazed: not a chip after almost 140 years at the bottom of the rough
Channel. Wearing white gloves, Peachy carefully unwrapped more
artifacts: green glass bottles, glass pitchers, copper coins from
Brazil, a mother-of-pearl button. "These are some of my favorites,"
she said, showing me an eggcup, then a wineglass, its stem snapped. "I
can't believe they took these on a ship."
Inside a large plastic bin filled with orange water, what looked like
chunks of rust-colored coral turned out to be corroded metal objects
clotted with barnacles. "Most of the discovery is in the lab," Peachy
explained. Her first step is to desalinate the unidentified artifacts
by soaking them in tap water. To see past the layers of concretions,
she then X-rays the pieces. Watching this freckled Bostonian work, I
couldn't help but think of Rafael Semmes, who wrote that his only
consolation in watching his ship sink was that "she was safe from the
polluting touch of the hated Yankee."
A month after the Alabama's demise, Manet glimpsed the Kearsarge in
the harbor at Boulogne, where he was vacationing. Not one to let a
coincidence pass, he then painted the victor. Thirty years later, the
Kearsarge foundered on Central America's Roncador Reef. It has never
been found. Aside from Manet's painting at the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, the only remnants of the ship that destroyed the Alabama are in a
small museum in the Navy Yard. After I left Peachy, I headed there to
see the Kearsarge's Bible. Nearby was the damaged section of the stern
post, which had been saved as a souvenir after the battle. The
Alabama's unexploded shell was still embedded in the dark wood.
Although the Kearsarge won that day, the Alabama, whose artifacts and
admirers outnumber its conqueror's, has outlived the ship that sent it
to the bottom of the sea.
Eugene Griessel
> Manet's painting of the battle between the Kearsarge and Alabama is a
> part of the Phildelphia Art Museum exhibition noted in a separate
> posting.
>
> http://www.nationaltrust.org/Magazine/story/index.htm
> www.preservationonline.org
>
> The French Connection
Anyone interested in the South African connection?
http://www.sawestcoast.com/cummings.html
The Alabama made an indelible mark here, leaving behind a legacy which
is still sung about in our annual January carnival.
Eugene Griessel
Jack Linthicum
That wouldn't happen to be "Here Comes Alibama" would it? Song
recorded by IIRC a group from Wesleyan University called "The
Highwaymen".
Eugene Griessel
> That wouldn't happen to be "Here Comes Alibama" would it? Song
> recorded by IIRC a group from Wesleyan University called "The
> Highwaymen".
Possibly - I've never heard it translated into English before though!
Jack Linthicum
The Alibama
Proud in the morning sun
Day has just begun
She's a queen riding on the waves
So many miles away
Sailing many a day
Brave in dark storms and hurricanes
Bringing something for everyone
From far-off lands underneath the sun
Here comes the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
Here comes the Alibama, sailing homewards to you and to me
The Alibama, the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
The Alibama, the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
Here comes the Alibama-ma
Here comes the Alibama-ma
Here comes the Alibama-ma
Here comes the Alibama-ma
Sailing the seven seas
Like a bird on the breeze
Oh how she travelled far and wide
Now she is nearly at home
Not much longer alone
Coming back on the morning tide
Unreleased:
Bring us home, wind up high in the mast
Keep us safe, hold her steady and fast
(Unreleased verse:) And the people at home
Have been waiting so long
Through the tears and the pain
'Cause they're sailing home again
Bringing something for everyone
From far-off lands underneath the sun
Here comes the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
Here comes the Alibama, sailing homewards to you and to me
The Alibama, the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
The Alibama, the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
The Alibama, the Alibama, the Alibama from over the sea
The Alibama, the Alibama...
http://www.groovecave.com/boneym/lyrics/bl_10000.12.htm
The Afrikaans lyrics, plus a museum tour
http://64.235.34.221/CSVA/Stars_Bars/2001spring2.htm