Raphael Semmes, in the foreground, poses on his ship's 110-pound rifled gun, its most powerful cannon. But as British troops rushed to seize the Alabama, it slipped up the coast in 1862, and the crew took on weapons before heading to the Azores to pick up Confederate Navy Capt. The Laird Brothers of Birkenhead launched the Alabama right as British forces cracked down on the illegal trade under threats of war from then President Abraham Lincoln. Merchant vessels had little use for these paddle wheels, but they allowed combatants to maneuver much better in a fight. It had plenty of sails, like a warship or a merchant vessel would, but it also had a steam-powered paddle wheel. British shipyards were allowed to build warships for the Confederacy early in the war as long as the ship buyers said they were for peaceful purposes and as long as no weapons were present when it was shipped.īut it was clear the Alabama was built for a fight. The Alabama was built in England, nominally as a merchant ship. While most of the Confederate Navy in the states was either penned up or quickly defeated during the Civil War, the Confederacy poured resources into blockade runners and commerce raiders that were successful, and few could even touch the CSS Alabama.
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