(no audio) - [Captain] What steamer is that?

- [Raphael] We're a Confederate Steamer Alabama.

(dramatic music) - [Gideon] That turncoat trained by the United States Navy has captured 11 ships and burned seven.

- I thought that your war had arisen out of the slavery question.

- You are the wife of Raphael Semmes, the pirate?

- I am an abolitionist.

(waves roaring) (no audio) - [Narrator] Major funding for this program has been provided by the Ben May Charitable Trust, the Paul and Alma Fischer Education Endowment, the Alabama Humanities Alliance, a state partner with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Betty McGowin Charitable Trust.

(no audio) (dramatic music) (dark ominous music) (dark ominous music continues) - [Ann] Dear Rafe, I am bound for Cincinnati to join my family.

You know in my heart I believe Lincoln is right and that the slaves must be freed and have decided I cannot remain in the South.

(dramatic music) - [Raphael Dearest Ann, the Confederate Navy has commissioned me to do the enemy's commerce the greatest injury in the shortest amount of time.

And the British have kindly provided me with exactly the ship I need.

- No name connected with the rebel service, no spy, bushwhacker or guerilla of the grossest criminality was so generally detested as Raphael Semmes.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (light upbeat music) (light upbeat music continues) (light upbeat music continues) - He's kind of a celebrity.

Hundreds of ships are looking for him and he just shows them his heels and off he goes.

- Here is this British ship under Southern command that is going around sinking all these Union vessels.

- There was a fifth column in Britain that was actively, secretly, supporting the South.

- Semmes was essentially responsible for decimating the Union merchant fleet, and utterly humiliating the North on the seas.

- [Stephen] They not only couldn't sink him, they couldn't find him.

They had no idea where he was.

- She will be myth, a skimmer of the seas.

Oh yes, until taken.

(dramatic music) (no audio) (wind howling) - [Stephen] Raphael Semmes grew up in a divided state, Maryland.

It was free labor in the northern counties.

It was slave labor in the south.

The Semmes family had farmed tobacco for five generations in Charles County, Southern Maryland and it owned slaves to do that.

That's the circumstance that Semmes was born into.

♪ Go back down ♪ ♪ Go on back down ♪ ♪ Oh, he's come to go down ♪ ♪ Oh, oh ♪ - He's an orphan at the age of 14.

He and his only sibling, a brother, go to live with various uncles.

They have their own families.

The houses are crowded.

Semmes wants to get out.

(mournful music) How he gets out is going into the Navy at 16.

All of a sudden he finds his (speaking in foreign language).

(waves roaring) (dramatic music) He loves being on a ship even though he tends to get seasick.

He marries Ann Spencer of Cincinnati, 1837, I think it was, who is not only anti-slavery, she's a Protestant and Semmes is from generations of Maryland Catholics.

So this is a very odd match, but it works.

It's a good marriage.

They love each other.

At some point in the 1840s, Semmes moved the family down to Mobile Alabama, Deep South.

- Stationed, I think in Pensacola before the Civil War, liked Mobile actually considered its home ever afterwards.

(bright fluting music) (drums tapping) - Semmes was in the U.S. Navy for 35 years and much of that time was not content.

- In the 19th century, officers were promoted largely in the basis of seniority.

You would have to wait quite literally for someone in the senior rank to die or to retire before you could be elevated to the next position.

And if you were a hard charging young officer, this was stultifying.

- It killed ambition, it stifled talent and Semmes felt that really acutely.

He'd served with great distinction in the Mexican War.

He had written a bestselling fine book about the history of the Mexican War.

(pensive music) What he wanted was to command a ship at sea.

(thunder roaring) He did not have a good reputation in the Navy.

Really was more a scholar than a naval man at sea.

He was out of place there.

His habits were reading and writing.

That's what he really liked to do.

- [Craig] Semmes was kind of Byronic, I mean, he was a a literary man.

He had that famous mustache.

(pensive music) (Raphael sighs) - [Raphael] Ann, they deny me again for a command at sea (pensive music) and I shall soon be too old for it.

(pensive music) (crickets chirping) (fireworks booming) (children chattering) (church bells ringing) (drums tapping) - The outbreak of the Civil War required a lot of individuals to make a decision about where their loyalties led.

A lot of people decided immediately, I'm going with my state, that's where I was born.

That's where my allegiance is.

- As the Civil War approaches Semmes is dithering.

He is not committed.

He's wondering what to do.

(mournful music) (waves crashing) The summer of 1860s, he's on a tour of the Great Lakes lighthouses as part of his Navy job, writes a long letter to his wife Ann and doesn't mention the politics of the time.

The country was falling apart.

He tried to stay away from that.

He doesn't talk about any of that.

He just talks about it all the Great Lakes and then the war made it impossible.

He's got to decide and it takes him a while.

It's not easy.

He's got a good job with the lighthouse board.

(dramatic music) - [Raphael] The time had now come.

It must be admitted indeed that there was some little nerve required on the part of an officer of the Army or Navy to elect to go with his state.

If he remained where he was, a competency for life, promotion.

If he went with the South a dark and uncertain future lay before him.

- Raphael Semmes had no doubt.

Raphael Semmes is going South and I think that's partly a reflection of his plucky, revolutionary cowboy-ish personality.

(bright upbeat music) So when he had an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a brand new naval service, he jumped at it.

He wanted adventure, he wanted excitement, and he wanted to be appreciated for his success and he wanted promotion.

- [Raphael] I had already passed the prime of life and was going gently down that declivity at whose base we all arrive sooner or later.

But I thank God that I had still a few years before me and vigor enough of constitution left to prove my worth.

I at once sought an interview with the Secretary of the Confederate Navy.

- Jefferson Davis wasn't particularly interested in naval matters, at least in the beginning.

We don't need a navy.

You know, you can join the army if you want and if they were a sea captain they might be astonished.

"Well, well what do you mean?"

And he says, "Well the North says there's not gonna be a war."

(dramatic music) (cannons booming) - [Raphael] Fort Sumter surrendered on the 13th of April, 1861.

(bright upbeat music) The next day was a hugely festive day in Montgomery.

A large Confederate flag was displayed amid repeated cheering and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs.

The people were all agog to hear the welcome tidings.

- Semmes quickly becomes a real fire-eating Southern patriot, saying, "We are now under the gun of this terrible regime in the North and we're gonna fight it out to the end."

And the change is just like that.

- [Craig] The difficulty that Confederacy had was that it had so few ships.

- [Stephen] The South had no maritime tradition.

It had steamboats that were on rivers and along the coast, but it had no ships for the deep ocean.

- [Raphael] The board of naval offices was in New Orleans to look for steamers that could be used as commerce raiders.

- [Stephen] Commerce raiding was the preferred strategy used by the weaker naval power in wars dating back to the beginning of the age of sail.

- [Raphael] I picked out a dismantled ferryboat, full of top-hamper, furniture, crockery and as unlike a war ship as possible.

We called her the Sumter.

- Kind of a lash up as the British would say.

Couple of guns on board.

So clearly it's designed not to fight a war at sea.

It's designed to attack and capture merchant ships.

- [Raphael] Once she was refitted, the Sumter's lines were easy that seemed to say she was not so averse to the service in which she was about to be employed.

- [Stephen] Semmes got a reputation as a kind of a will o' the wisp by escaping from places where he shouldn't have been able to escape.

And the first is when the fitted out Sumter tries to go to sea.

A blockade was practically the first strategic decision made by the Lincoln administration.

The idea that you would seal off the Confederacy, you would put ships off the coast that would literally prevent ships from getting in, ships from getting out.

(dramatic suspenseful music) From New Orleans, the Mississippi River at the mouth, diverges into a half a dozen different channels so he would feint in one direction and go in another direction and he'd watch the weather and he'd wait until the guarding ship, the USS Brooklyn, a pretty efficient swift blockading ship, was off investigating something else and then he'd make a run for it and then the Brooklyn would chase him down and the storm would come.

(thunder rumbling) He'd dash into the storm and that allowed him just enough extra speed gradually to pull away before the ship finally disappeared over the horizon.

This was a pattern in his life.

He would get away from stronger ships and hunt down weaker ships and that was his mission.

(mysterious music) - [Raphael] Our first prize bore the name of the Golden Rocket, nearly new with a cargo of sugar from one of the Cuban ports.

- [Stephen] The arrangement of the ship is such that the ship's captain is at the rear of the lower deck and that's where he spends his time.

- The standard operating procedure for a privateer really throughout history has been a so-called ruse de guerre deception where you approach flying a friendly flag or a neutral flag and you don't really reveal your true nature and intent until you're close enough to have the advantage over your quarry.

- He would get up close and then change the flag to the Confederate flag and, if necessary, fire a warning shot off the bow of the other ship or maybe between the foremast and the midmast.

- Merchant ships are usually unarmed entirely.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

In the world of merchant ships, if you only have a few guns, that's enough.

- The captain of the other ship would've brought aboard.

Semmes was simultaneously the judge, the prosecutor and the jury.

What a surprise, he generally decided in favor of himself, that it was, in fact, a Union ship.

All the people from the Union ship would be brought over to Semmes' ship and then they would take what they wanted from the Union ship in terms of supplies, foods, bedding, and then they would burn the ship at sea.

(dramatic music) (fire crackling) - [Craig] There're those poignant scenes of a ship captain who was often also the ship's owner watching his ship go up in smoke, his life's investment, and there was nothing he could do.

- My duty is a painful one, to destroy so noble a ship as yours, but I must discharge it without being in regret.

And for yourself?

You only had to do what many thousands have done before submit to the fortunes of war.

(dramatic music) (fire roaring) The flames burned red and lurid in the murky atmosphere, like some jack-o'-lantern now appearing and now disappearing as it descended into the abyss of the waves.

- November, 1861, the Confederate ship Sumter, captained by a turncoat trained by the United States Navy has captured 11 ships and burned seven.

- Wheelers were slow and cargo ships also were slow.

The Sumter was slow, top speed of about eight knots, not much but enough to catch a wheeler or a cargo ship.

To the North, it's just a bunch of secessionists and traitors who had defied the constitution.

It's just a pirate ship and that is how the Northern press always describes Semmes.

- He would bristle if you call him a pirate.

He was a warship of a legitimate country, as he saw it, attacking the trade of the enemy in a time-honored manner.

- At the Dutch island of Saint Anne, the authorities had been told by the American consul that our fight was merely a rebellion and we had no rights as a belligerent to enter the port.

A grand council of state was held to debate the matter.

After the lapse of an hour or two becoming impatient, I told my first lieutenant, Mr. Kell, maybe we better do some gunnery practice.

(dramatic music) - [Kell] (indistinct) Through to quarters!

Move it quickly!

(shouting) - [Craig] He let Kell do the dirty work as his first officer, kept himself apart.

(drums tapping) - [Kell] Battle stations!

Look out, go, go!

- [Raphael] Pretty soon, (artillery booming) a shell whizzed across the windows of the council chamber, which overlooked the sea.

The council decided to give us entrance to the port.

- [Stephen] First on the Sumter in 1861 and then again on the Alabama in 1862, they were almost caught at the Caribbean island of Martinique and both times he did a fake and twice escaped.

But Semmes was just so smart, he was smarter and more adroit than any of the guys chasing him.

- [Craig] And he really was a student of what we would call oceanography.

And in fact during the 1840s he did survey work in the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean aboard U.S. naval vessels, studied the currents and the winds and the patterns, taking soundings of the depths of the water and measuring temperatures.

- Semmes in six months captures 18 prizes.

The Sumter is the first real vessel of the Confederate Navy.

It doesn't go far.

It roams down into the Caribbean and then makes its way, with some difficulty, over to Gibraltar across the ocean.

- [Raphael] Dearest Ann, thankful to be in Gibraltar where my letter can be posted and one day arrive in Cincinnati.

We put on quite a show for the local population burning a Union whaler, the Neapolitan, in full view of the British garrison here.

But the British masters of Gibraltar instigated, I've heard by the United States Council, refused to let us take on coal.

- [Stephen] There's Union warships off the entrance.

If he goes out, he's gonna get caught.

So he ends up being trapped there and he looks around and says, "You know what, I've had a good day.

We'll just call it."

Paid off the crew, sold the ship, and went ashore to fight another day.

(dramatic music) (bells clanging) - [Craig] It's interesting to think about the British attitude toward the American Civil War because it was kind of schizophrenic.

- Southerners were overconfident that king cotton would be their salvation and they certainly needed it in England.

- [Amanda] Cotton was like oil is today.

It was the fuel that helped keep the British economy going.

- But there were other sources of cotton around the world and those became more important with the onset of the Civil War.

So that strategy backfired for the South.

Slavery was really a significant stumbling block to their recognition.

- I think it's universally acknowledged that slavery is the root problem that leads to the dissolution of the Union and the fighting of the Civil War and the British despised slavery.

- At the start of the war, the whole of Great Britain was on the side of the North.

Beginning in the 1780s, British abolitionist began to take hold.

It's quite certain that slavery and slave trade would've been abolished in the 1790s had it not been for the French Revolution, which drove British opinion quite hard to the right.

By the time it was actually abolished in the 1830s, it was a kind of de rigueur.

Of course you were anti-slavery.

When Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published, she came to England to great acclaim and was considered an international heroine.

Anti-slavery opinion became what all right thinking British men and women adopted.

- Lincoln was anti-slavery his whole life.

He had been elected as an anti-slavery candidate, but for the first two years of the war, he insists that his goal is not to remove slavery.

His goal is to reunite the Union.

- President Lincoln very much needed the support of the border states.

Those border states, Maryland, for example, would not have gone on the side of the North if they had to immediately free their slaves.

For that reason alone, until halfway through the war, the war ostensibly was not about slavery.

But that shouldn't have prevented Lincoln and William Henry Seward from selling that line around the world.

(dramatic music) It's my personal opinion that the war would've ended much sooner.

You wouldn't have had four years of war.

You might have had 18 months.

Lincoln only needed the British to come on side of the North for the rest of the world to accept that the North was going to win and for the South to have lost heart, lost all access to money and war material.

(mysterious music) Instead, what you have is this insane international scandal that takes place at the end of 1861 called the Trent Affair.

- [John] A British ship carrying two southern envoys was stopped at sea by a Union warship.

They were taken into custody.

- It will be the equivalent today of an American Airlines jet being forced to land by say the Iranians and two Iranian passengers being taken off the plane and kidnapped.

- [Raphael] We received word that the British steamer Trent had been forcibly boarded and Senators Mason and Slidell taken off.

We might have an ally in the war sooner than we expected.

- [John] Story hit the papers in London.

The British public was outraged.

- [Stephen] Great Britain and the United States hated each other for most of the 19th century.

We'd fought two bitter wars, the Revolution, then 1812 that we were always poking each other in the eye.

- Americans felt that British were arrogant, hypercritical, and did not take the Democratic experiment seriously.

The British felt that Americans were hypercritical, arrogant, and trumpeted up the Democratic experiment way more than it deserved to be.

(triumphant music) When Captain Wilkes brought the two Southerners to the U.S. there was great jubilation and celebration and somehow this strange sense that America got one over Britain.

(crowd cheering) Once it became clear that Washington was not going to disavow the actions of Wilkes, but in fact Congress was going to vote on a medal, the Brits began to fear that they would have to go to war to get either an apology and or the release of the two Confederate commissioners.

- [Raphael] The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Welles, whose insane hatred of England was quite remarkable, made haste to write the captain a congratulatory letter but an awful collapse was at hand.

(ominous music) - [Gideon] Mr. President, while I heartily endorse Captain Wilkes for trying to prevent British support for the rebels, I'm afraid Wilkes has taken his actions against the British steamer Trent on his own volition and, regrettably, has not followed all, quite all, protocols of international law.

- There really was no reason to go to war.

Captain Wilkes had acted on his own.

He didn't have an order to intercept this ship.

That really would've been a cause for war.

- When Lincoln was studying the problem, he said, "You know, one war at a time."

And he let the Southern envoys go and diffused the crisis.

- So what was an open door beginning of the war towards the North was slammed shut in its face and the North never recovers its position or popularity with Britain or indeed Europe throughout the rest of the war.

(mournful music) - James Bulloch was a very able representative for the Confederacy in Liverpool.

Liverpool was the real center for the Confederacy in England.

They had a history of engaging in the slave trade and then it was a major cotton port.

So that's where James Bulloch goes.

He was there to to acquire ships for the Confederate Navy.

There's a lot of chicanery in constructing the Alabama because England, it was not supposed to build any warships for either side.

- The North accused Britain of making it very easy for the South to buy their war material and get hold of ships and, in fact, it wasn't that easy at all.

There were two laws.

They couldn't recruit soldiers to fight for them, same for both sides.

And the other was they couldn't buy war ships, not even decommissioned war ships.

So the only way the Southern agents could get hold of ships was to get through a very complicated system in which a mysterious third buyer, not the South, would buy a ship that had the capability of being turned into a war ship, which would then be sailed out secretly.

And then once it was in neutral waters, then it could be turned into a war ship with cannons loaded and that kind of thing.

- [Stephen] Bulloch made contact with the Lairds.

They were one of the main ship building firms in England, across the Merser from Liverpool in Birkenhead, a big 650-foot stretch of the riverfront was the Laird Shipyard.

- Semmes gets command of the CSS Alabama, one of the ships being built in Britain, specifically as a commerce raider, but it was all done by subterfuge.

It was supposedly being built for the Italians.

And then there was some discussion, maybe it's being built for the Turks.

- [John] They didn't put any weapons on them, they didn't make them look like what they were actually going to be.

And really what everybody knew they were going to be.

- [Stephen] The American representative in Britain, now he knew what was going on but he couldn't prove it.

- [Raphael] I was directed by letter to return to Europe and assume command of a new ship which was being built on the River Mersey, referred to as the 290.

- The name for the ship in the Laird Shipyard was 290 because it was the 290th ship they had built.

Everybody in Liverpool knew it was a warship being built for James Bulloch, being built for the South.

- A lot of accusations flew that the British were secretly in cahoots with the South.

How on earth could this warship have escaped from Great Britain if it hadn't have been part of an enormous pro-Southern conspiracy?

But actually when you look at the story, you realize that it's lesser conspiracy than a farce.

When the decision was made by Scotland secretary Lord John Russell, that the Alabama must be stopped at all costs, that order never reached Liverpool in time because the man who was entrusted with the piece of paper had a nervous breakdown.

His wife was banging on his door trying to get him out before he harmed himself.

And while all that is happening, the paper was sitting in his briefcase.

- There's an unknown informant who tells the Confederates in Liverpool, the ship is about to be seized by British authorities.

The ship sneaks out on a deception.

There's a party of ladies in their gowns and gentlemen, the story is they're just going out for cruise around the harbor and actually it just keeps going.

Another ship removes the ladies.

They know a Union ship is lurking south of Ireland.

So it goes around the northern tip of Ireland to a rendezvous in the Azores with another ship that had brought all the war material.

(dramatic music) In the Azores, he needed to recruit a crew.

There were three ships there from England.

He gave one speech appealing to their ideals, not understanding he was addressing a bunch of sailors who are not long on ideals.

These are English and Irish sailors who do not give a #*#*#*#* about the American Civil War.

And then he gave a second speech where he trotted out double the usual wages.

Sea battles, it may be surprising but they really wanted to have sea battles and he promised them when he caught a prize the sailors would get a share.

So with those enticements he gets not a complete crew, but enough of a crew.

And the ship sets forth in August of '62 and starts doing damage.

(gentle music) (waves crashing) (waves crashing) (mournful music) (suspenseful music) (mournful music) (bell clinking) - [Raphael] My memory was busy with the events of the last few months.

It seemed as though I had dreamed a dream and found it difficult upon waking to unite the discordant parts.

A great government had been broken up.

Family ties had been severed and war, ghastly war was array in a household against itself.

A little while back and I had served under the very flag which I had that day defied.

- The Alabama was a great shark to the north, made his reputation in the first five months of the cruise from August '62 until January '63.

It starts out in the Azores, plucks nine whalers there and another ship in two weeks, then goes to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland where the Trans-Atlantic steamers cross in great perfusion, just sitting ducks waiting for the Alabama.

- The Alabama was incredibly fast.

She could do sale and steam together and come close to 14 or 15 knots and then he had these big pivot guns.

I think one of 'em was a 100 pounder.

So one shot from that across your bow, if you're an unarmed whaling vessel or a merchant vessel's gonna get your attention.

- [Stephen] When the captain is brought to the Alabama, there sits the infamous Captain Semmes with papers that have been given to him and that he had perused and found wanting.

If the Union ship had resisted him, had taken him on a long pursuit that could last hours or half the day, Semmes could be in a foul mood and very dismissive.

He looked at the papers and sometimes he agreed, "Yes, you're right.

This is not an American ship with an American cargo, you can go."

That didn't happen very often.

- Where are you taking me?

- You'll find out!

(shouting) - [John] The passengers would be brought over and kept on the Alabama, taken to the nearest port.

Once the ship was destroyed, he wasn't really interested in the people.

They just needed to be put out of the way as soon as he could.

- Semmes didn't kill anyone in the process of doing all this.

It was painful for those who were subject to his capture, but they lived to tell the story.

- There's a firing party that goes on the captured ship.

They rip beds apart, they de-straw mattresses, they (indistinct).

They open the windows and the hatches for ventilation.

They spread an accelerant around, butter or lard or alcohol.

They fire the ship in several places and then very quickly go to their boat and go back to the Alabama.

And there's this great bonfire, lasts for hours.

(dramatic music) (fire crackling) It's their handiwork.

(dramatic music) (fire crackling) In the fall of '62, the Alabama was out there fairly close to the United States and you just can't exaggerate the extent of the panic, especially in the port cities, Boston, Philly and New York.

Early in October, he's cruising around the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and he decides to attack New York City.

One moderately sized boat with a total of eight guns is going to assault the biggest harbor in North America.

He thought big, he was audacious.

- He would like to threaten the coast.

Whether that was Philadelphia or New York or New Haven, Connecticut, it almost didn't matter.

He could strike more terror into the hearts of those perfidious Yankees.

The plan is to approach New York Harbor on some moonless dark night.

There were unarmed Union ships at anchor, sink them, and maybe lob a few shells into lower Manhattan.

It's called off 'cause he is short of coal and not in great repair, but he did approach it, kind of looked around.

Raphael Semmes knew that there was a value in being a superstar, in being a a terror.

There's an old line, often attributed to Blackbeard the pirate, "That there's no such thing as bad publicity."

All publicity made Semmes a larger than life character.

- [Stephen] Semmes had this peculiar mustache and it was only maintained by waxing it every day.

And so he was called Old Beeswax by the crew.

- [Sailor] Old Beeswax.

- A lot of his men were British.

They weren't even fellow Southerners, so he probably didn't have a lot of fellow feeling for them anyway.

They were interchangeable as far as he was concerned.

- Well one of the curious things about the Alabama is that it never went to Alabama.

For one thing, it never even touched port in the Confederate States.

(dramatic music) - They were really basically an island unto themselves for months at a time and they had to provision themselves as best they could, either through captured vessels or friendly territory.

- Semmes always denied that any pillaging, looting, happened when his boarding parties went on a prize before it was burned.

But there are plenty of reports of this.

They absolutely act like pirates.

They'd come over and steal anything they wanted from the ship.

Semmes is in his cabin.

He's a writer, writers are solitary introverts.

He didn't want to know about it.

- By most accounts it was not a tidy ship.

You know, piles of coal and laundry hanging from the lines.

- [Craig] Some of the people that he'd captured from these prizes that he took who would make their way back to Boston or New York or Philadelphia, the newspaper editors would say, "Well, tell us about this fella.

What is he like?"

"He's, oh, it was terrible.

It's horrid.

He has sharpened teeth."

It only built him up so that when a vessel appeared over the horizon and you thought it might be the Alabama, oh my gosh, I'm so terrified.

I'll strike my flag immediately.

- Meanwhile, the Alabama is doing whatever it wants.

Steamships would come from California loaded with gold, as much as 3 million.

That's a pile of money in the 1860s and then land at the isthmus of Panama, cross that by land, then take another ship up to the banking institutions in New York.

Semmes catches one of those ships, it's going in the wrong direction.

It's from New York rather than going to New York.

But it raises that possibility that it can interfere with these gold shipments, these monthly gold shipments of up to $3 million.

- Naturally the rampage of Semmes and his cohorts on the high seas created a lot of unhappiness among the merchant class.

- [John] He incurred a lot of hatred on Wall Street, to be sure.

- [Stephen] This is their livelihood.

They own these ships and they're sending them out and they're defenseless, they're slow, they're wooden.

- The merchant class is very influential politically in the Northern states.

And so they went to their representatives and went to the national government and said, "What are we doing about this?

Why can't you find this fellow?"

- Gideon Welles, the secretary of the Navy, he was a newspaper guy from Hartford, Connecticut.

He knew nothing, nothing about ships or the Navy, had no experience with them.

His idea of how to chase the Alabama was to wait for reports from where it was cited last, which come in and those reports are already a couple of weeks late.

And then he sent ships to that area, which takes a couple of weeks to get there.

So it's now a month since Semmes was ever there.

- Communication moved so slowly in those days.

The transatlantic cable had been laid in 1858, but it broke in 1859, so there's no transatlantic cable connection.

- [Stephen] He's constantly showing up somewhere where he is not supposed to be.

(match whooshing) - My next objective was to strike a blow at Bank's expedition.

This gentleman who had been a prominent Massachusetts politician but had no sort of military talent, had risen to the surface, the bubbling and boiling Yankee cauldron and was appointed by Honest Abe to subjugate Texas.

To transport the invasion force, a large number of sinkable transport ships wood rendezvous at Galveston, which the enemy had captured from us.

But as we neared Galveston, we didn't see any transports.

Only five steamers, which looked like ships of war.

(artillery booming) The Yankees are bombarding the port.

Aha.

A change of program here.

We've retaken Galveston.

- [Crew] Hooray!

(bright music) - [Sailor] Oy, captain.

- Oy!

- one of this steamers, sir, it's coming after us.

- All right, yeah.

- Wahoo!

- [Sailor] Yeah!

- Semmes relished the opportunity to sort of prove his metal.

He'd been sinking these defenseless ships and he said, "Now I'm gonna take somebody on toe to toe."

(water whooshing) At some point the captain of the Hatteras realized that this was not just some blockade runner he was after.

She was obviously very trimmed, yet she was purposefully going too slow, leading him further and further out.

- [Captain] What steamer is that?

- We are her Britannic Majesty's ship, Richmond!

(dark tense music) - [Captain] We are the United States ship, Hatteras!

We shall send a party to board!

(dark tense music) - We are the Confederate steamer, Alabama!

(artillery booming) (dramatic music) (sailors shouting) (artillery booming) (sailors shouting) - [Stephen] It's a quick battle.

It doesn't last long.

- First time in history that a steam warship sunk another steam warship in battle and Semmes was the guy who did it.

- 15 miles away, the other Union ships have seen the muzzle flashes.

Semmes picks up all the survivors and runs across the Gulf of Mexico back into the Caribbean and they escape.

(dramatic suspenseful music) Summer of '62 to the spring of '63 was the worst time for the Union in the entire war.

Everything was going badly.

Lincoln could not find a competent general, and that is exactly when the Alabama is most effective and most famous.

The fact is, it was not inevitable who would win the Civil War.

The outcome was very much up in the air, particularly in that time.

- The rampage of the Alabama, and not just the Alabama but the Florida and the Georgia and the other commerce raiders that the British built and collectively did quite a bit of damage to the Union merchant fleet.

So much so that insurance rates doubled and then doubled again.

Many ship owners re-flagged their vessels to other countries so they wouldn't fall victim to these predators of the sea.

- By late 1864, 900 American ships had been sold mainly to the Brits.

What this does is cripple the American Merchant Marine.

- [Gideon] Mr. President, the British government has decided, and this is my opinion, to sweep our commerce from the ocean.

They have deliberately allowed clandestine support for the Confederacy with military supplies and ships.

- There's a term that came out of the Second World War, which is fifth column.

Within the country itself is a block of supporters who are not on your side.

There was a fifth column in Britain that was actively secretly supporting the South.

- [Craig] There was a lot of sympathy for the Confederates among the ranks of the aristocrats.

- There was a certain schadenfreude in Britain about the misfortunes of this headlong rampant democracy in America that wasn't doing so well.

- If people were to ask how did the South manage to win over British support?

The Confederacy essentially created the playbook.

How you turn a country from one set of opinions to another and funded it by one man in particular, Henry Hotze, a Swiss born Southerner who went to England with a great deal of money and built up a network of spies, supporters, and tame journalists to trump up support for the South and denigrate the North and show them in the worst possible light.

And it worked.

- [Henry] We ask whether any nation has done and endured so much for freedom as the South.

- The South was clearly smaller than the North.

The Confederacy used that to paint the South as the underdog.

The North is fighting for empire.

The South is fighting for freedom.

- [Stephen] Confederates went out of their way to say, "Oh no, this really isn't about slavery.

This is a matter of self-government."

- Whenever asked about slavery, the Confederate emissaries, they would say things like, "Well, obviously, we can't do anything right now because we're fighting for our lives, for our independence, but we will deal with slavery at the end of the war."

(bright music) - [Craig] Semmes found happy receptions at many of the ports that he put into.

He's kind of a celebrity.

The John Dillinger of his day, look at this guy, robs banks and he gets away with it.

- August '63, one year into the cruise, he goes down to the coast of Brazil, which is another busy crossroad.

Sets out for the Cape of Good Hope.

Arrives at the tip of South Africa and that's the zenith of the cruise right there.

He dominated the the newspapers for days.

The Alabama!

The Alabama!

They composed a song about him that remained a folk song for decades thereafter.

♪ When the Alabama's keel was laid ♪ ♪ Roll, Alabama, roll ♪ ♪ She was laid in the yard of Johnathan Laird ♪ ♪ Oh roll, Alabama, roll ♪ ♪ Down River Mersey she sailed forth ♪ ♪ Roll, Alabama, roll ♪ ♪ To destroy the commerce of the North ♪ ♪ Oh roll, Alabama, roll ♪ - [Raphael] As the Alabama came into Cape Town, we found the heights overlooking Table Bay covered with people.

Over the quarries, along the Malay varying ground, the gallows, hill and the beach, there were masses of people, nothing but a sea of heads as far as the eye could reach.

- Fairly cleverly, Semmes was good at playing the Robin Hood role.

They never did anything that would disgust public opinion.

No women were assaulted, no blood was shed.

So the plucky, underdog image was never sullied.

- The United States had used privateers to attack British merchant shipping in the American Revolution and in the war of 1812.

And the British took great satisfaction in the fact that they were kind of getting a bit of their own back.

- The South did not have to win the war.

The South only had to not lose the war, that is keep the war going until the North got tired of bearing the brunt of the punishment, absorbing all those deaths, all those losses.

(mournful music) - [Amanda] Certainly after the Battle of Antietam in 1862, there was a movement, including in the British government itself, to say enough, this has to stop, the lives being lost, the civilians.

There are these cartoons, one in particular by Punch, which depicted an enormous juggernaut over skulls.

(drums tapping) - [Gideon] The termination of this terrible conflict seems more remote with every movement.

Now President Lincoln has determined we must free the slaves by proclamation or be ourselves subdued.

The rebels themselves invoked war on the subject of slavery had appealed to arms.

Unless they avail themselves of the alternative presented, the war can scarcely be other than one of subjugation.

- Early on in the war, William Henry Seward, who in many ways was a remarkable Secretary of State, forbade the U.S. legations throughout the rest of the world from even mentioning the word slavery or associating slavery with the cause of the war.

And by hamstringing his diplomats like that, the South could take advantage and say, "You see, the war is not about slavery."

And it wasn't until 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation came through that the two were linked.

And by that point it enabled the international press to say the slavery option is one of desperation.

It's being done to start a race war.

It has nothing to do with any kind of humanitarian impulse to liberate slaves themselves.

(machinery clacking) - The working people of Britain, as a rule, they understood it was about slavery.

Even if it's some of the cocktail parties in London, they would toast Semmes as the will o' the wisp of the bounding main.

The workers in the Midlands of Britain were very much pro-union.

- [Worker] To his Excellency Abraham Lincoln, resident of the United States of America, from the cotton mill workers of Manchester, England.

Sir, the vast progress which you have made in the short space of 20 months, fills us with the hope that every stain on your freedom will shortly be removed and that the erasure of that foul blot on civilization and Christianity, chattel slavery will cause the name of Abraham Lincoln to be honored and revered and cement Great Britain and the United States in close and enduring regard.

(triumphant music) - [Guest] A newspaper man gets to be secretary.

- [Guest] The second Lincoln put him in.

- [Guest] What's he know about it?

Nothin'.

- [Guest] Name of the secretary's gotta go to a New Englander.

- [Guest] What does Lincoln know about it?

- [Guest] He is annoying.

- Annoying at a time when we need all our force on blockade duty to be compelled to send out our best ships on a fruitless errand of searching the endless oceans for this wolf from Liverpool.

- [Guest] What kind of ships do we have, Mr. Secretary?

- Thus far, thus far- - Paddle wheel.

(guests laughing) - The British pirate Alabama, sailing under rebel colors, has escaped capture, yes.

As a consequence there are marvelous accounts, simply marvelous of her wonderful speed and equally marvelous ones of the lack of speed of our cruisers.

There is no controverting these fables, of course.

She will be myth, a skimmer of the seas, oh yes, until taken.

- Welles sends out six ships in pursuit and then 12 ships and then 18 ships, including the Vanderbilt, which is the biggest, fastest ship in the Union Navy.

It was a trans-Atlantic steamer.

One of the fastest of the 1850s.

- The Vanderbilt was donated to the United States government, by who else?

Vanderbilt, a very modest man, named the vessel after himself.

What made it a concern to the rebel raiders is that it was so large you could put a lot of guns on that.

- Charles Wilkes in the Caribbean defying Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, decides that he wants the Vanderbilt as his personal flagship 'cause it's got plush accommodations.

- [Gideon] We have accounts the Alabama has struck very near the lines where the Vanderbilt was ordered to be.

The Alabama would've been a captive had instructions been obeyed.

I, of course, shall be abused for the escape of the Alabama, thanks to the man I made Admiral Wilkes.

Fortunately, the Vanderbilt is now on its way to South Africa at last.

(dramatic music) - It was now nine o'clock at night.

A report had come in only a day or two before that the Vanderbilt was still cruising off the Cape.

If she got news of us.

Lieutenant Kell, can't you get the men to move faster?

They'll block us in.

We'll get out.

We've done it before.

- But the moon is near full.

- He told people that the only Union ship he feared was the Vanderbilt.

It was three times bigger, had twice the fire power, was faster.

If they had ever been in propinquity, the Alabama was doomed.

It could not escape the Vanderbilt.

- [Raphael] September 16th, 1863, anchored in Simon's Bay not as protected as Cape Town.

Learned the Vanderbilt was here, leaving five days ago on the 11th instant.

The Vanderbilt is in full pursuit of us now.

(fog horn blaring) Stop the engines.

Do you hear anything?

- Voices.

- Speaking English?

- As you know, sir, on our ships and theirs, there's many languages to be spoke, as long as they can haul a rope.

So even though they might be speaking Portuguese, they could still be on a Yankee ship.

- [Sailor] Roll, Alabama!

(laughing) - Coming closer?

(dramatic suspenseful music) Does he see us?

(ominous music) (ominous music continues) (ominous music continues) (ominous music continues) Dearest Ann, I am feeling my age after over a year at sea.

I am tired.

I'm too old for this.

We have left South Africa and are on our way across the Indian Ocean where it's unlikely the Vanderbilt will follow.

The signs of weakness on our part are painfully apparent after the battle of Gettysburg and the surrender of Vicksburg.

But I, I will never acknowledge defeat.

(pensive music) (birds chirping) - Mrs. Semmes.

- Yes?

- You're gonna have to leave Cincinnati, ma'am.

For your own safety, please pack your belongings.

- But this is my home.

I was born here.

- You are the wife of Raphael Semmes, the pirate?

An advocate of slavery?

- But I am an abolitionist.

- [Soldier] You're gonna have to move South, ma'am.

I'm sorry.

- There's a lot of angry people, ma'am, you'd better go.

(pensive music) (birds chirping) - [Stephen] Accompanied by a Union officer to Baltimore and then to Richmond where there are Semmes' relatives that she can stay with and eventually, somehow, she makes her way down to the family home in Mobile.

(mysterious music) - [Raphael] In Singapore, I had a local official on board.

He very considerably brought me a New York newspaper.

- I must confess, Captain, your American war puzzles me.

Can you explain?

- Hmm.

The federal government under which we have lived and which was designed for the common benefit has been made the means of despoiling the South to enrich the North.

- All this is new to me, I assure you.

I thought that your war had arisen out of the slavery question.

- That is a common mistake of foreigners.

The enemy has taken pains to impress upon foreign nations this false view of the case, with the exception of a few honest zealots, the canting hypocritical Yankee cares little for our slaves.

We are fighting for our independence.

(sighs) - I really admire your ship.

- I fell in love the first time I saw her.

(people chattering) (quiet thoughtful music) - [Guest] I must be on my way.

(waves roaring) (waves roaring continues) (Raphael groaning) (waves roaring continues) (Raphael groaning) (waves roaring continues) (Raphael groaning) (waves roaring continues) (Raphael groaning) (dramatic music) - In order to expand his cruising area, Semmes had taken the Alabama across the Indian Ocean into the East China Sea, out there the Straits of Malacca.

He'd pretty much covered much of the globe, but his crew was getting a bit surly.

- [Stephen] The Alabama almost did its job too well.

During the first year, they averaged a prize a week.

During the second year, 10 months, they averaged prize a month.

- One of the difficulties, of course, that he encountered was he had to capture American ship.

And if the owner of the American ships would reflag his vessel, their official registry was in another country.

Well, Semmes saw this for what it was.

It's a ruse de guerre.

He would stop a ship and he'd say, "Well, you're flying the French flag.

I don't believe you.

Your cargo is from Boston, it's bound to Philadelphia.

If you all speak English, I'm gonna burn you anyway."

(dramatic music) (explosion booming) - Over the course of the voyage, there were desertions.

21 guys deserted in Singapore.

Other guys tried to escape.

They were very annoyed with what was going on.

If they weren't getting their prize money and liberty and battles.

To replace those guys, they have to go down to the dregs, along the waterfront, to flop houses and dives.

- [Raphael] If the reader recollects Falstaff's description of his ragged battalion, he will have a pretty good idea of the personnel I had before me.

It would require a great deal of washing and scrubbing and wholesome feeding and a long abstinence from drinks to render them fit for use.

- Semmes could see that his men were getting restive and it was partly these new guys.

- [Craig] He would tell all his crew, "Oh, don't worry.

The Confederate government is gonna pay you the value of that prize as soon as the war is over."

The Confederacy looks less and less like it's gonna be able to pay off at the end of the cruise.

- [Stephen] The ship gradually gets very close to a mutiny.

Semmes caught a prize with a whole bunch of fine cigars.

They hadn't had cigars for a long time.

This was really a fine thing.

(birds squawking) - These cigars are compliments of our excellent Captain Raphael Semmes in appreciation for your hard work and diligent service.

Because of (groaning).

Stop!

No!

Roscoe, how dare you!

(groaning) (blows thudding) (people shouting) (blows thudding) (people shouting) (Raphael vomiting) (blows thudding) (people shouting) - [Craig] They take the cigars and they throw 'em away as though to say, we can't be bought off with cigars.

How about our prize money?

- All these men are in chains.

Apply the lash as needed.

Approaching the strait of Sunda into the China Sea, we encountered an English bark who informed us the USS Wyoming was cruising in the strait.

(suspenseful music) We prepared for battle.

(suspenseful music) But we saw nothing of the Wyoming.

(wind whistling) The enemy seemed resolved to let his commerce go rather than forego his purpose of subjugating us, rendering it up a willing sacrifice on the profane altar of his fanaticism and the devilish passions which have been engendered by the war.

(chair clattering) (Raphael groans) - The Confederacy managed to do tremendous damage to the American merchant fleet.

But the North was rich enough that it did not change the North's attitude about seeing this war through to conclusion.

(pensive music) - [Stephen] Summer of '64, they've been at sea for over a year and a half and everything is worn out, the captain, the sailors and in particular the ship.

The sheets of copper were peeling off the wooden hull.

So he heads back toward Europe where his ship could be refitted.

- The thing is up there, we might need somebody.

- We better have gunnery practice.

(footsteps tapping) - The Rockingham filled with guano from the Chincha Islands, shipped by the Guano Consignment Company of Great Britain.

One Joseph A. Danino who signs for Danino and Moscoso certifies that the guano belongs to the Peruvian government.

And her Britannic Majesty's consulate Lima certifies that the said Joseph A. Danino appeared before him and voluntarily declared that the cargo is truly and verily the property of the Peruvian government.

And with the most perfect unconcern for the laws of nations, no one swore to anything.

Mr. Danino certified and the consol certified that Mr. Danino had certified.

(laughs) We transferred to the Alabama such stores and provisions as we could make room for and the weather being fine, we made a target of the Rockingham, (artillery booming) firing some shot and shell into her with good effect.

And at 5:00 PM we burned her and fired a way on our course for the coast of France.

(dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) - [Stephen] France under Napoleon III had allowed two cruisers, the Florida and the Georgia to come in for repairs.

So Semmes thought he'd try Cherbourg.

That's where he landed in June of '64.

- But the French say you can't refit a warship in our harbor.

It's a violation of neutrality.

In 1862, they might have been willing to do it 'cause now you're betting on a possible winner.

By 1864, you're betting on a team that's going the wrong way.

- [John] He didn't have any choice.

He had to have repairs, so he had to put in.

And then once he was there, he really had a difficult decision to make.

- [Raphael] When the Alabama arrived in Cherbourg, the enemy's steamer Kearsarge was lying at Flushing.

On the 14th of June or three days after our arrival, she steamed into the harbor of Cherbourg, sent a boat on shore to communicate with the authorities and, without anchoring, steamed out again and took her station off the breakwater.

(mysterious music) (mysterious music continues) (mysterious music continues) - [Stephen] The Kearsarge is hunting for the Alabama.

It's relatively new, got a new steam plant.

- [John] Bringing the Alabama to heal would be a feather in the cap of any captain.

- John A. Winslow was a by the book, rather dull, rather boring, to be perfectly candid about it, naval officer.

He's been at sea for 15 months.

He's been looking for these guys for a long time and his crew is getting a bit surly.

So finding the Alabama in Cherbourg Harbor, he's not gonna give it a chance to get away.

- The ships were very similar, about the same firepower, but not quite, because the Kearsarge had two big Dahlgren cannon 11-inch shells, the biggest shells on the Alabama were eight inch.

But more to the point, the Alabama's powder was lousy by then.

After two years at sea, it was corrupted by moisture.

They had had gunnery practice just a little while earlier on one of their prizes and a third of their shells had failed to explode.

- He was bottled up there.

He could just abandon his ship and try to get to England or the Bahamas and get another ship, which was not very likely.

Or he could surrender, which was unpalatable or he could sail forth and do battle, which was sort of the romantic beau ideal.

- [Raphael] I now addressed a note to Mr. Bonnevilles, our agent requesting him to inform Captain Winslow through the United States consul that if he would wait until I could receive some coal on board, I would come out and give him battle.

And the defiance was understood to have been accepted.

- So it's like a gentleman telling his second that he intends a duel and please do not leave until I am ready to fight.

And he said he'd be ready by Thursday.

Thursday comes, Friday, Saturday.

Alabama doesn't come out.

The Alabama doesn't show, and they're guys on the Kearsarge writing in their journals, "I just don't think he's gonna come."

- [Raphael] My crew seem not only willing, but anxious for the combat and I had every confidence in their steadiness and drill.

- [Stephen] What he most wanted to save was his journals.

I think he was planning to write a book if he survived the war.

A publisher, a very enterprising London publisher makes his way to Cherbourg the week before, pitches the book.

Semmes is very glad to say, "Take my journals."

So even if the ship goes down and Semmes is killed, he will live.

(ominous music) - [Raphael] The day being Sunday, always a good day for us, and the weather fine, a large concourse of people, many having come all the way from Paris, collected on the heights above the town.

They waved as we passed from the upper stories of such of the houses as commanded a view of the sea and on the walls and fortifications of the harbor.

- There was a regular excursion train from Paris that came to Cherbourg every Sunday.

Just people from Paris coming out for a Sunday at the shore in Cherbourg.

And these people have no idea what they're about to see.

- [Raphael] Several French luggers employed as pilot boats went out with us and also an English steam yacht called the Deerhound.

- Officers and seamen of the Alabama!

You have been all over the world and it is not too much to say that you have destroyed and driven for protection under neutral flags 1/2 of the enemy's commerce, which at the beginning of the war covered every sea.

This is an achievement of which you may well be proud and a grateful country will not be unmindful of it.

The name of your ship has become a household word wherever civilization extends.

Shall that name be tarnished by defeat?

The thing is impossible.

The eyes of all Europe are at this moment upon you.

(triumphant music) - [Stephen] Semmes steams out of Cherbourg Harbor and approaches the Kearsarge.

The Kearsarge pulls away because it wants to be sure that they're outside that three mile limit.

- He wanted to draw Semmes out into an area where they could have an open confrontation.

Then Winslow turned the Kearsarge around and the two ships ran toward each other.

- And then finally Semmes fires the first shot, this muffled cough, followed by a big spray of white smoke.

The guns on the Kearsarge, with good power, fired off these clear cracks.

- Why did Semmes take a ship out to fight a vessel when he knew some of his ammunition might be suspect, when he knew this ship had been hunting for him?

Just guessing he wanted to end his campaign with a smashing victory.

(artillery booming) The Alabama fired regularly, but 99 1/2% of the time they missed.

- One of the Alabama's shells lodged in the stern post of the Kearsarge and didn't explode.

Had that shell exploded, the outcome might have been very different.

So it wasn't necessarily a completely foolhardy decision.

He had a fighting chance.

His men were just not as well drilled.

They were not as practiced at combat.

They were defeated by, really, a superior crew.

- [Stephen] One shot disabled the rudder of the Alabama.

The other shot went in right at the water hole and into the engine room and exploded.

It's doomed from that point on.

- [Craig] Somebody waving a white flag from the stern of the Alabama made it clear that they had in fact surrendered.

And then everybody stopped shooting.

- And the guys on the Kearsarge were very let down.

They wanted a good long battle and it's over after 70 minutes, 26 guys on the Alabama died during the battle, drowned.

And the ship comes to a vertical pose like this, stays there for an instant and then, whoa.

♪ Off the three mile limit in '64 ♪ ♪ Roll, Alabama, roll ♪ ♪ She sank to the bottom of the ocean floor ♪ ♪ Oh roll, Alabama, roll ♪ (bright music) (dramatic music) - Mary Chestnut, a famous Southern diarist, when she heard of Semmes' defeat said, "Well, captain Semmes is a fool, after all."

She should've just let that one go.

- [Raphael] Great rejoicing was had in Yankeedom when it was known that the Alabama had been beaten.

Shouts of triumph, rent the air and bonfires lighted every hill.

But along with the rejoicing there went up a howl of disappointed rage that I, Raphael Semmes, had escaped being made a prisoner.

(pensive music) - It's naval tradition, the losing captain would come on board the ship of the winning captain, quite literally, present his sword.

And then the protocol was the winner would always say, "No, no sir, keep your sword for you have fought valiantly.

But won't you join me for some sherry in my cabin."

- Toward the end of the battle, Semmes took his sword and threw it into the ocean.

He gets picked up by an English yacht, the Deerhound, which I think had planned this because it picked up 41 people and most of them were officers.

- About 68 members of the crew were taken on board the Kearsarge.

But another 40 were taken on board the Deerhound.

Well the Deerhound feels no obligation to turn them over to the Americans.

The skipper of the yacht says, "Well, where would you like to go?"

And he said, "I'd like to go to England."

"All right, let's go."

And off they went.

- And the honorable thing to do from Captain Winslow's perspective would've been that you present yourself, surrender your vessel and your crew and hand over your sword.

To go and and get on a British yacht (laughs) was not.

- [Stephen] And the guys on the Kearsarge cannot believe what they're seeing.

What?

It's running away?

- [Craig] Did Semmes, having surrendered his ship, have an obligation to submit himself to the person who had defeated him?

- How in all that chaos and desperation had they managed to pick up Kell and Semmes and most of the other officers?

The historians are divided on this.

I'm of the school that thinks that it was all planned in advance.

- When the Alabama and the USS Kearsarge had their final battle, it was incredibly close to British shore.

One of the ships that got quite close was the Deerhound that actually picked up survivors.

And afterwards it was accused of collusion with the Southerners, some kind of prearranged agreement that in the event of the Alabama sinking it would come in and pick up survivors.

I think that's unlikely, to be honest.

There was so much pro-Southern sentiments in British ports, the cotton connection and lot of sailors had been to the South that it's not difficult to imagine people quite willing to hang around and being willing to help if needed.

(bright music) - [Raphael] To the editor of "The Daily News," your correspondent declares it has been discovered that the Deerhound was a consort of the Alabama and on the night before had received many valuable articles for safekeeping from that vessel.

This is simply untrue.

There was no communication by me with anyone on the Deerhound before the battle.

And I have asked my surviving officers and men, if they had any communication with persons aboard the Deerhound, and they replied, "None whatsoever."

- [Stephen] It starts to seem dangerous in England because the Union authorities say he should have surrendered.

- I made my preparations for returning to the Confederate States and on the 3rd of October, 1864, embarked onboard the steamer Tasmanian, taking the name Raymond Smith and a fake passport across to Havana and then a boat across the Gulf to Mexico across the border, now controlled by Yankees, at Matamoros and across Texas by horseback and stage.

(pensive music) - [Craig] Imagine not seeing your wife and kids for years.

He often wrote about this in the journal, the sacrifices that a seamen makes.

Gradually gets home to Mobile in 1864.

(gentle music) - Ann!

Ann!

(gentle music) (Ann sighs) (gentle music) (both sighing) - Where are Moses and Ritty?

- I have set them free.

They're in town finding provisions for us all to survive.

(gentle music) (Raphael laughs) - [Stephen] And then what happens is he gets a telegram.

He's told to come to Richmond and get another assignment.

- No.

You have been at war for three years and four months.

It's over now.

- I'm a naval officer commissioned by my government.

- [Ann] And what ships do the Confederates have now.

- I have my orders.

I'll do whatever's necessary.

- Raphael, it's over.

(birds chirping) - There are still people fighting and dying.

- For what?

Most of them don't even know and never did.

- No one likes to be subjugated.

- That is exactly why I told Moses and Ritty that they were free.

(birds chirping) - I'll have dinner with Jefferson Davis and meet Robert E. Lee.

- How wonderful.

I hope they're proud of what they've done to us.

I just want you to stay home.

- Good god, woman.

That's what I want too.

(sighs) They're after me, Anne.

- Then give up.

(pensive music) - Gideon Welles, U.S. Navy Secretary signs an order to arrest Semmes because he ran from Cherbourg.

He didn't give himself up as he should have by military protocol, but he has to keep fighting to the end.

He's made head of the James River Squadron, an utterly irrelevant bunch of decrepit ships that were defending Richmond, plowing up and down the James River, looking for Union marauders of whom there are none.

Lee surrenders.

But there are detachments that are still fighting.

And Semmes leads some troops from Richmond down to Greensboro, North Carolina.

Finally surrenders maybe a month after Lee did, something like that.

And once again goes home.

And that's a long way by land.

Now he traverses the Confederacy.

Seeing the extent of the damage, mile after mile, ruined sawmills, salt mills, mansions.

Anything industrial or useful, it's just blown apart.

The South is prostrate.

It must have been terribly depressing.

- [Gideon] This rebellion, which has convulsed the nation for four years and caused such sacrifice of blood and treasure may be traced in a great degree to certain Southern gentlemen who studied Scott's novels and fancied themselves cavaliers imbued with chivalry, a superior class, not born to labor, but to command.

Others of their countrymen who did not own slaves, who labored with their own hands, who depended on their own exertions for a livelihood, who were mechanics, traders, and tillers of the soil were in their estimate inferiors.

- Semmes was really unrepentant.

He was an unreconstructed rebel, you could say.

He accepted the defeat, but he still believed that the South and its cause were right.

He did not deny slavery as the cause of the war.

But he still believed that economic and political forces had more to do with it than than moral ones.

(Ann sobbing) - Commander Semmes.

- He finally did get the promotion.

- Admiral Semmes.

- You're under arrest.

- Rafe.

(no audio) (pensive music) (dramatic music) - "I had," the president remarked, "This strange dream again last night and we shall, judging from the past, have great news very soon.

I think it must be from Sherman."

Great events did indeed follow for within a few hours the good and gentle and great man who narrated his dream closed forever his earthly career.

I had retired to bed about half past 10 on the evening of the 14th of April and was just getting asleep when my wife said someone was at our door.

Sitting up in bed, I heard someone twice call to John, my son, whose sleeping room was directly over the front door.

I rose at once and raised a window when my messenger James called to me that, "Mr. Lincoln, the president, had been shot."

- For all four years of the war, British opinion was on the side of the South and then when President Lincoln was assassinated, it was as if the blindfold had been removed.

Overnight, British public opinion changed back in favor of the North.

And one of the newspapers that's still around today, now known as "The Guardian" in those days known as "The Manchester Guardian," published a long apology in which it said, "We were wrong.

We supported the wrong side.

We don't why we were wrong, but we were wrong.

And you know we are and we are sorry."

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