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and converted one captured vessel into a satellite raider (the Tuscaloosa would have a short career of six months and take only one prize). But by the summer of 1863 the Alabama and its crew were showing signs of battle fatigue. Still searching for prey, Semmes sailed down to Cape Town, South Africa, where to his surprise and relief he and his crew were fêted as heroes. Nothing so exciting or glamorous had visited Cape Town for a very long time, and the residents of this lonely outpost of the British Empire could hardly believe their good fortune. They were so welcoming—inviting the Southerners on big game and ostrich hunts—that twenty-one sailors deserted, leaving Semmes with a serious shortage of men. After much scraping around, his executive officer, 1st Lieutenant John McIntosh Kell, was able to find only eleven replacements. Fortunately, two Prussian naval officers who had been shipwrecked near Cape Town also joined as master’s mates.8 The appearance of the gunboat USS Vanderbilt off the Cape put an end to the Alabama crew’s two-month respite from their harsh life at sea. At midnight on September 24, the ship set sail during a heavy gale for the fertile hunting grounds of the Far East, where Semmes knew he was not expected.27.1

An article entitled “Our Cruise” in the Southern African Mail by George Townley Fullam, one of the English officers on board the Alabama, eventually reached England in the autumn. Fullam described the ship’s adventures, from her narrow escape from Liverpool harbor in July 1862 to her glorious entry into Cape Town twelve months later. Embarrassingly for the British government, Fullam claimed that someone in Her Majesty’s Customs had alerted the Confederates to the Alabama’s pending seizure, allowing her to get away in time. Not surprisingly, the U.S. legation was incensed by this revelation. Charles Francis Adams ordered the article to be printed as a pamphlet and for a copy to be sent to Lord Russell with a strongly worded complaint attached.

Although Russell insisted to Adams that the British government could not be held responsible for the depredations of the Alabama, privately he was worried that the United States might carry out its threat—first made by Seward and Adams in 1862—to sue Britain for damages after the war.10 Russell discussed with the law officers whether they should bar the raider from all British ports around the world, but in their opinion such a move could be interpreted as an admission of guilt regarding the Alabama’s escape. Russell was relieved when an alleged violation of British neutrality at Queenstown, Ireland—involving USS Kearsarge and sixteen Irish stowaways—for once reversed the direction of complaints, giving him the opportunity to play the injured party with the U.S. legation.27.2

Ill.49 The Union and the Confederacy both rail at a determinedly calm John Bull, Punch, November 1863.

The British government was fully aware that large numbers of Irishmen were enlisting in the Federal army; Consul Archibald had observed the crowds at Castle Garden, the immigration depot on the southernmost tip of Manhattan, and estimated that every week, 150 Irish laborers were stepping off the boat and into the arms of recruiters.11 A Home Office clerk compiling passenger statistics first spotted the phenomenon in April 1863, when he noticed a sharp increase—it had almost tripled since 1862—in the number of single male travelers. After carefully reviewing all the statistics from the past three years, the Home Office discovered that the actual increase in the emigration of unmarried Irishmen was roughly ten thousand a year (a figure the government decided it could accept without too much heartache).12

The Confederate government was also concerned about the vast influx of Irish immigrants to the North, and in August 1863 sent its propagandist in France, Edwin De Leon, to Ireland, where he diligently spent several weeks publishing articles about the horrors of the war. James Mason followed in September, but his findings confirmed their worst fears. The Irish were so poor