Combat· American Civil War
High Seas and Foreign Stations
A grouping of the Marine actions on the open ocean and at distant ports during the war.
The most celebrated was the Trent affair, when Marines from the USS San Jacinto boarded the British mail steamer Trent and carried off the Confederate envoys Mason and Slidell, an act that nearly brought war with Britain. The category also takes in the long hunt for the Confederate commerce raiders, culminating in the duel off Cherbourg in which the USS Kearsarge sank the CSS Alabama, the Kearsarge's Marines serving her guns; the USS Wyoming's fight in the Straits of Shimonoseki in Japan; and the strange end of the raider Shenandoah, whose Confederate Marines, surrendering at Liverpool in November 1865, were among the last Confederate combatants to lay down arms. These scattered actions carried the Marine guards of the navy across the world's oceans in the course of the war.
Engagements in this conflict (7) Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 396