Confederate Raider : Raphael Semmes of the Alabama

Taylor, John M.

ISBN 10: 0028810864 / ISBN 13: 9780028810867

Published by Brassey's, Incorporated, Washington, 1994

About this Item

xi, 317pp, index, bibliographic notes, apendix, bw ills. Or yellow papered boards in jacket. Slight edge wear to jacket. Prev owners gift inscr on ffep. The first biography of Confederate naval officer Raphael Semmes in over 60 years this book details the life and career of the commander of the most successful sea raider of all time- the CSS Alabama- which took out nearly 100 Federal merchant vessels and became a household word on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 007558

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Confederate Raider : Raphael Semmes of the Alabama
• Publisher: Brassey's, Incorporated, Washington
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0028810864
• ISBN 13: 9780028810867
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Biography
  • Maritime/ Sailing/ Shipping
  • Militaria

About this title

Synopsis

Confederate Raider is the enthralling story of the Civil War as fought on the high seas by Raphael Semmes, the Confederacy's most famous and revered naval officer. Yet many of his Northern contemporaries considered the Yankee-hating Semmes nothing more than a pirate. In either guise, Semmes commanded the most successful sea raider of all time - the C.S.S. Alabama. During a two-year cruise, she took nearly a hundred Federal merchant vessels out of the war and became a household word on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Her final battle, off the coast of France against the U.S.S. Kearsarge, was an epic clash befitting the last one-on-one duel of wooden ships. A commander who carried out his mission without being able to bring his ship into a Southern port and whose crew had no allegiance to the Confederacy, Semmes is a brilliant and compelling figure in American military history.

Reviews

It is a minor scandal that this excellent biography is the first full-scale treatment of Raphael Semmes, the most distinguished commerce raider not only of the Confederacy but in all American naval history. Semmes, who was born in Maryland, served with distinction in the Mexican War, then went with the Confederacy over the states' rights issue and commanded both the C.S.S. Sumter and the famous Alabama. He emerges from these pages as an extremely able and aggressive sea warrior but in many respects not a very sympathetic human being--an unreconstructed Southerner, something of a martinet, and chivalric to the point of mismanaging his duel with the U.S.S. Kearsarge. Taylor's writing is a model of clarity, of balance, and of filling in the background for the nonspecialist reader. His biography deserves wide readership and certainly a place in Civil War and naval history collections. Roland Green