Combat· American Civil War
CSS Shenandoah cruise end
The last Confederate force afloat, and the strange, belated end of the war at sea.
The commerce raider CSS Shenandoah carried the war into the far North Pacific, and through the spring and summer of 1865 she destroyed the Union whaling fleet in the Bering Sea, firing what is reckoned the last shot of the Civil War off the Siberian coast in late June, weeks after Lee had surrendered. Her Confederate Marine guard was among her company. Learning at last, from a British ship, that the Confederacy had collapsed, her captain disarmed her and made the long run to England rather than risk capture and a charge of piracy. On 6 November 1865 the Shenandoah lowered the last Confederate flag and surrendered to the British authorities at Liverpool. Her people, the Marine guard among them, were the last Confederate combatants of the war, laying down arms more than six months after Appomattox.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 459