THE CIVIL WAR 235 



roll of whalers taken by the Sumter and the Alabama is short 

 compared with the roll of whalers taken by the Shenandoah. 



The story of the Shenandoah, like the story of the Alabama, 

 begins in England. She was named the Sea King when an 

 English merchant bought her in London, loaded her with 

 assorted merchandise, and cleared her for the East Indies. 

 But a Confederate officer took charge of her when she was 

 safely outside British waters, and at the Madeira Islands she 

 met the English merchantman Laurel, laden with guns, am- 

 munition, and supplies, which had sailed from Liverpool the 

 same day the Sea King sailed from London. On board the 

 Laurel, also, were twenty-three Confederate officers and ten 

 or a dozen picked men from the crew of the Alabama. 



Renamed the Shenandoah, and commissioned as a Confederate 

 warship, but sadly undermanned — the British seamen who 

 had come out in the two vessels refused to transfer their alle- 

 giance to the Confederacy — she headed south. Her proper 

 complement would have been a hundred and fifty men; in- 

 cluding cook, cabin boy, firemen, and coal-heavers, she carried 

 nineteen, and twenty- three officers. But six men from the 

 crew of her first prize joined the nineteen, and as she pushed on 

 toward the Cape of Good Hope, she picked up and destroyed 

 occasional merchantmen by the way and recruited from them : 

 thus approaching her intended cruising ground in the Pacific 

 she grew steadily more formidable. 



It was not Waddell's plan to cruise in the South Atlantic 

 whaling grounds, but as she passed, he captured and destroyed 

 his first whaling prize, the luckless barque Edward of New 

 Bedford, which happened to be lying with a large whale along- 

 side virtually in the course of the Shenandoah, off Tristan da 

 Cunha. The Edward, Waddell burned; her officers and men 

 he put ashore on Tristan da Cunha. 



In Melbourne he docked the Shenandoah for repairs, which 

 detained him nearly a month and might have ended his voyage 

 there and then, had the efforts of the American consul to en- 

 tangle the vessel in a net of legal proceedings been successful. 

 He sailed on February 18th, with forty-two stowaways on 



