C. S. S. Shenandoah: The Memoirs of Lieutenant Commanding James I. Waddell

by James I. Waddell, James D. Horan (Editor)

From the rear cover of this 200 page "The last armed Confederate cruiser sent to sea, the C.S.S. Shenandoah was a beautiful, dangerous vessel that inflicted significant damage to Union commerce. All told she captured 38 ships, burned 32, and took 1.053 prisoners. The ship's skipper, James I. Waddell, published his account of the Shenandoah's legendary encounters and details of his own naval career a few years after the war. Nearly a century later Waddell's lively memoirs were uncovered in the National Archives by James D. Horan, who edited, annotated, and republished them in 1960. This Bluejacket Books edition reproduces the 1960 volume

Genres: History, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

Reviews

[dejah_thoris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another read-and-weed from Dad's collection that taught me something new. Waddell was an incredible captain who captured more prisoners and burned more ships than any other in the Civil War. Then Waddell decided he wouldn't surrender to the Union and sailed back to England where the ship had been built to await extradition there. The Union then tried to convince England to pay for Waddell's privateering debts because they knew the ship, though unarmed when it left England, would be used in the ongoing civil conflict. England even gave credit to the Confederacy against cotton futures to fund more ship-building, so they were certainly playing both sides. Definitely worth reading.