THE USE OF ALABAMAS IN WAR.*
WE have not many faults to find with this narrative of Captain Serames's adventures in the Confederate service. Notwithstanding a few Americanisms, a free use of slang, a tone of levity in describing the vices of sailors unbecoming in a gentleman of his position and education, an excessive length in the discussion of the questions of international law connected with the status of Confederate cruisers, and last, but not least, the intemperate hate and contempt with which " Yankees " are almost invariably Spoken of, natural enough to the defeated partizan in a civil war, but which ought to have been suppressed most jealously, the work
on the whole, a fitting record of a most remarkable adventure.
us in this character we wish to speak of it. Independent of the Irritating legal and moral discussions which have arisen out of the Alabama's career, and which have been and will be discussed ad nauseam both practically and historically, the story itself deserves to be discussed with calmness as a study in naval warfare. The first experiment in the use of steamers to cruise against au enemy's merchant shipping, no matter what were the exceptional circumstances, should throw some light on the means and possibilities of this new agency. And the present narrative supplies the necessary materials. Captain Semmes had plainly looked closely into the problem before his first, and especially before his second cruise, and he is evidently deeply interested in telling what his view of the difficulties was and the devices that were thought necessary or expedient to circumvent the enemy and keep the cruisers afloat and in repair within the narrow limits prescribed by neutral claims. In a professional view the narrative may take rank among the best records of naval service we possess, the writing being clear, vivid, and to the point, and except fcr a slight savour of monotony and the blemishes we have hinted at, which might be easily removed, agreeable enough to read.
At first sight, the use of steam cruisers appears to be revolutionary, and for a great maritime country alarming. The common opinion that one or two Confederate steamers sufficed to make the United States' merchant fleet disappear from the ocean expresses with tolerable accuracy the superficial fact. Although the actual number of ships destroyed by the Sumter and the Alabama and their sister cruisers may not have been very great, yet the insecurity of the sea was such that United States' ships were laid up or transferred to neutral owners. But as usual, the superficial fact is not the real one. Two important deductions must be made. The first is that the steam shipping of the United States was left untouched. Whether through accident or design, or owing to the small amount of that shipping, Captain Semmes only once overhauled an American steamer in the neighbourhood of Cuba, and he could do nothing with it on account of the number of passengers and his inability to carry the prize into any port. If steam cruisers would be as available against steamers as against sailing vessels, there is at least no proof that they would be so from experience. The Confederate precedent thus loses much of its value, at least for ourselves. The entries and clearances of steamers, reckoning by tonnage, are now nearly half the total number made at our ports by our own ships-10,000,000 tons to 22,000,000 tons in 1867; and the proportion of business in steamers is continually increasing, having been less than a third ten years ago, though it is • about a half now. Only one-half our shipping trade, and that the half which is diminishing in importance, is in the circumstances of that American shipping which is supposed to have been wholly driven from the sea. The second deduction is, that in point of fact, operating against sailing vessels, the Gonfederate cruisers derived very little of their efficiency from their steam powers. The same work might have been done by fast sailing ships ; in fact, was done by the cruisers as sailing ships, and not as steamers. Except as a precaution against capture, which was never or only once required to be used, steam was a superfluity to the Alabama. Not only did it move from one cruising ground to another under sail, but it lay in wait and gave chase under sail too ; only on one occasion, in the China seas, using steam to capture a vessel that might in other circumstances have escaped. The Sumter, it may be said, used steam more freely, not being even a good sailer ; but then the Sander could not keep the sea, and was abandoned after a short and comparatively ineffectual cruise, being constantly in difficulties with its supply of coal. After its irruption into West Indian waters, and the surprise of some half-dozen small schooners, it was literally driven from pillar to post, from one coaling station to another, to get coal, capturing one or two small vessels accidentally met with, but not lying out to cruise. It was out six months altogether, from July 1, 1861, to January, 1862; but from July 26 to September 24 it made no prize at all, dodging to no purpose among the islands and ports on the northern coast of South America,— f rom Puerto Cabello in Venezuela to Trinidad, from Trinidad to Cayenne, from Cayenne to Surinam in Dutch Guiana, from Surinam to Maranham ; and afterwards it captured only two ships in a cruise of six weeks, before it put into Martinique. A good clipper would, on the whole, have done better than the Sumter.
The most striking peculiarity, however, in the case of the Confederate cruisers is the want of protection for the assailed merchant fleet. One has heard much of convoys in former wars, by which, at some cost, no doubt, a portion of the national commerce was saved ; and of anti-cruisers, by which privateering was made dangerous and exciting for those engaged in it, as well as for the commerce they preyed upon ; but we hear nothing of the one and very little of the other in this story of Captain Semmes. Had
there been convoys, it is impossible to suppose that United States' ships in South American or East Indian ports would have been laid up wholesale for want of freights. They are awkward contrivances enough, but they are better than nothing, and might have been more available than ever before at the present time, when navigation is more scientific, and the difficult parts of long voyages are reduced within narrow limits. At any rate, if there were to be no convoys, the life of Confederate cruisers might have been made "uncomfortable," which it was not in any degree. Take the case of the Sumter. Within a few days after its escape, it was known to be at large in West Indian waters, but off none of the ports it visited during the next two or three months was any Federal cruiser lying in wait to pounce upon it, as, weak and crippled, it again and again sought shelter and supplies. Of course, if the United States preferred the extinction of their commerce to the temporary diversion of means from more important ends, which the suppression of the cruisers would have required—which may have been a sound enough policy—coda qutestio ; only the American precedent would not apply to a power which appreciated its foreign trade differently, and did not choose to let the cruisers have an easy life. The neglect to provide against the Alabama is more conspicuous. When it was commissioned in the autumn of 1862, the war had lasted eighteen months ; there had been full time to get up a war fleet, especially a class of wooden ships that would have been equally efficient as blockading vessels and as cruisers. As soon as it was known then that a wolf like the Alabama was ready to pounce upon the flock, it might have been thought that United States' watch-dogs would have been sent to lie in wait on the principal highways and stations of commerce. But the very nearest stations and gates, where the Alabama did moat mischief of all,—the Azores (one of the principal whaling stations), the crossing of the Gulf Stream, the "calm belts" where ships from South America and from round the Capes cross the tropics on their way to Europe and the States, the Brazilian coast,—were all left unguarded. Again, at the Cape of Good Hope, whither Captain Semmes betook himself after being at sea nearly a year, there was no Yankee ship in waiting, and in the China seas, which was his next and last point, he heard of a Federal cruiser, but the cruiser does not seem to have heard of him, yet it would have been a comparatively easy matter not only to close all the entrances to that narrow sea, but to patrol it. Notwithstanding every precaution, a good many American ships might have been nipped up, but there could not possibly have been the same havoc had precaution been used, and the career of the Alabama might have been prematurely closed. These deductions, we think, are not unimportant with regard to the use of Ala basses as cruisers. The question of questions for them is the supply of coal, but the question was clearly not raised in its completeness by ships which did not pursue steamers, and did not use steam in cruising against sailing vessels. The absence of any opposition had likewise an important bearing on their continued life. The waste of coal would have been much more rapid during a chequered existence than it actually was, and the difficulty of getting coal, which in the actual event was not small, would have been exceedingly formidable, if not absolutely fatal. The wear and tear of the Alabama would also have been multiplied, and its handiness as a cruiser impaired. Captain Semmes, we should state, is very much " exercised " about the carelessness of the United States' Naval Department, and swats over and over again that he could not have done his work had there been Federal cruisers patrolling certain roads on the sea where he lay in wait and took all that came. Such statements, we are aware, must be taken cum grano, as those of a partizan still eager to irritate a victorious enemy ; but the least consideration shows that they carry their own evidence on their face. It will plainly make all the difference in the world to cruisers whether they can stick to certain favoured spots as the Alabama did, without let or hindrance ; or must waylay and circumvent solitary travellers on a jealously guarded road, without easy means of replenishing their quickly exhausted supplies.
In these three things, then,—the omission to cruise against steamers, the warfare against sailing ships with steamers used only as sailers, and the neglect of the enemy to protect his commerce,—the Confederate exploit is deficient, we may add disappointingly deficient, as a precedent. The first use of steam cruisers in naval war ought to have taught us so much, and it has in fact taught us so little. Any conclusion that can be drawn must be by indirect inference, the observation of what might have been done on both sides. Though forced to reason in this way, we have a strong impression that a great maritime state, closely blockading the ports of its enemy, has less instead of more reason to dread the action of a few cruisers since the introduction of steam. The celerity of the attack which steam renders possible is more than counter.. balanced by the regularity and certainty which steam gives to the defence. Can it be thought possible that a solitary cruiser like the Alabama, or the Sumter, or the Shenandoah would now venture into our narrow seas, as American cruisers did during the War of Independence ? How many war sloops and gunboate would it take to make the life of such an intruder not worth six hours' purchase? In such crowded thoroughfares of the sea indeed the presence of a hostile cruiser would be no more possible than that of a highwayman openly exercising his profession in the Strand. Steam enables the thoroughfare to be patrolled quickly and certainly, the privateer can never get out of sight for long, and the publicity and danger of interruptions are conditions fatal to his purpose. Much the same might be said of our trade with New York and the St. Lawrence, and our Mediterranean trade. The thoroughfares are not so crowded as our home waters, but it would not take many cruisers to make them absolutely safe roads on which no cruiser could lie in wait at any point, and a single venture on which, while it might lead to the capture of a prize, is more likely to lead to being caught. It would be easy especially to blockade the Mediterranean with a few ships between Gibraltar and Ceuta, the Confederate steamers all through the war not venturing within that sea. When the Suez Canal is opened there will be a narrow sea for almost all our Indian and Australian trade, especially if it becomes more and more a trade for steamers ; and a war would help to make it that, in proportion to the danger from enemy's cruisers. Might not something be done, moreover, to patrol the more open roads of the sea, by which our South American, Indian, Australian, and China trades are conducted,—cruisers being stationed besides at the most dangerous points ? With precautions of this sort a very high degree of safety might be secured for our entire commerce, whatever facilities of coming and going an enemy's cruisers might have ; and these facilities will be lees, and not more, than those of the Confederate cruisers. The Alabama had an elaborate arrangement for meeting a coal ship on some out-of-the-way coasts—at Blanquilla off Venezuela, at Areas off Yucatan, and at Fernando de Noronha off Brazil ; but the arrangement broke down at a critical point, as all such arrangements would be apt to do, and the Alabama was not tested by the necessity of frequent coaling. Latterly coal was not to be had easily in neutral ports, and the same difficulty would be felt in a future war, there being likewise fewer neutral ports all over the world to a power at war with England than there is to a belligerent when England is neutral. In spite of all this, no one will say that a few cruisers would not do our commerce damage, but this they could always do. All we contend for is that they could not destroy it, or nearly so, or even increase the war risks upon the bulk of it. Of course, in a war with a considerable naval power there might be a different tale to tell, especially at first, but much injury to shipping was always the inevitable consequence of a big naval war. We are inclined to think, however, that England being par excellence the country where fast unarmoured steamers are built, the protection of our commerce in any war ought to be relatively more easy than it ever has been. The attack must be made and the defence conducted by a class of vessels of which we are far and away the principal builders, the opportunities of defence having been at the same time increased.
We need not say that we have had in our minds the American belief, or as we must call it illusion, that the Alabama precedent furnishes them with the means of being revenged upon us if we should go to war with any power—that it places our commerce at their mercy. It is another instance of the way popular beliefs arise through the comparison of things which are only superficially the same, or only assumed to be the same, without any examination of the facts at all. Any equanimity we may feel, however, at the possibility of the Alabama precedent being turned against us ought not to diminish our desire to have a fair settlement of the difficulty. The cruisers themselves will not be much, but the mere chance of producing an irritation in this country agling6 Americans equal to the irritation they feel against us should be enough to make prudent politicians in both countries anxious to devise speedily an honourable arrangement.
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