Sal and I were driving down Lake Otis Parkway the other day listening to 107.5, our I ❤️ country station, when the DJ said something that had me go “WHAT?” He said that the last shot fired in the Civil War had been fired in Alaska. WHAT? I had to look into that. Here’s what I learned.
Well, stories vary. Lee surrendered to Grant in Appomattox VA on April 9, 1865. This is generally thought to be the end of the war. However, there is a memorial outside Waynesville NC which commemorates the last shot fired in the war on May 7, 1865, almost a month later. And, apparently that claim was almost immediately disputed by other “last shot” locations. Brownsville TX, for example, also makes the claim.
Most all Civil War history I’ve learned has been land battles. After all, more major battles were fought in Virginia than any other state. I know very little about naval battles, but some historians make the case that the last shots fired in the Civil War were fired from a Confederate ship off Alaska’s coast in the Bering Sea on June 22 or 28, two and a half months after Lee’s surrender. (Alaska, of course, at the time was claimed by Russia.)
The Sea King was built in supposedly neutral Great Britain. It had a smokestack that could be lowered and its masts and sails could be switched to look like another ship. The Sea King was built with subterfuge in mind. In October 1864, in a rendezvous off the coast of Africa, the ship was transferred to the Confederate navy, rigged for battle and renamed Shenandoah. Its mission was to disrupt Union shipping and commerce.
The New England whaling fleet off the coast of Alaska included some of the biggest and most expensive vessels of the day Their cargo of oil was essential for modern life in the nation's growing cities. The whaling grounds were in territory claimed by the Czar and Union battleships were thousands of miles away. No one envisioned a Confederate assault in the icy waters of Russian America. The Shenandoah had speed, power and guns that could fire a half mile away with some accuracy. The whalers gave little or no resistance. In 12 months, the Shenandoah had captured or sank 38 American ships and taken 1,000 prisoners without a single battle casualty on either side.
Between June 22 and 28, well after the end of the war, the crew of the Shenandoah, captained by James Waddell, captured or sank two dozen American ships near Little Diomede, an island situated in the Bering Strait where Alaska and Siberia nearly touch. Captured captains protested and showed Waddell newspaper articles of Lee’s surrender. Waddell, however, assumed the war continued on other fronts and dismissed the captains’ claims. Only by a chance encounter with a British ship while on his way to San Francisco with plans to attack the city were the newspaper reports confirmed for him. He learned of Lincoln’s assassination, Davis’s capture and that Confederate soldiers had received a blanket pardon—EXCEPT for the crew of the Shenandoah; they were to be caught and hanged.
Thus began a trip of 27,000 miles. The Shenandoah crew put the ship into disguise mode. They put the guns away and repainted the hull at sea. With multiple navies searching for them, they evaded capture, crossed three oceans, stayed out of main shipping lanes and never contacted another ship. The Shenandoah is the only Confederate ship to circumnavigate the globe. On November 5, 1865, the Shenandoah reached Liverpool and surrendered to the British Navy. Captain James Waddell was the last Confederate officer to surrender.
The Union demanded the crew be arrested, but Britain declined. The US brought history’s first international civil suit, know as the Alabama Claims, named after the most famous Confederate warship. The Alabama did more damage during the war, but the Shenandoah was more notorious because of the way it was obtained, the actions after the war had ended and they way they had evaded capture. The Alabama Claims were a series of demands for damages sought by the government of the United States from the United Kingdom in 1869 for attacks upon Union merchant ships by Confederate raiders built in British shipyards during the Civil War. Eventually Britain paid the US $15.5 million in damages. The Shenandoah’s officers returned to the US where several had successful careers. Captain Waddell continued to command ships and died in 1886. Seventy-six years later, the US Navy christened a guided missile destroyer the USS Waddell.
Most of the above is taken from writings of Lynn Schooler of Juneau who wrote “The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War.” He writes that the officers of the Shenandoah were a particularly charming group who made an impact in ports they visited. He says, “I'm not a Civil War buff. But as I traveled around the world, it became clear how really global the conflict was. (The history of the Shenandoah) is still common knowledge down in Melbourne. I saw three private boats with that name in the harbor. There's a prominent mural of the ship on the side of a restaurant. That surprised me because hardly any Americans know about it."
Now I, and a few others, know about it.
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