Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 25.djvu/129

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surrender until the i8th April, and Kirhy Smith until the 26th of May.

WITHOUT A COUNTRY AND WITHOUT A FLA<..

This information naturally effected a complete change in our status. It not only deprived us of the authority for being at sea, but actually prohibited our being there at all. The commissions of Cap- tain Waddell and his officers, literally speaking, were now "not worth the paper they were written on." We were without a country and without a flag. The ship itself had become the property of the United States.

"AND FREEDOM WITH HER BANNER TORN BUT FLYING."

It is true that the Shenandoah had the Confederate flag flying three months after, when we came to anchor in the Mersey, off Liverpool, but this was much a matter of sentiment, a sort of loyalty which you show to a friend in trouble, and in whom you still believe.

SURRENDERED TO THE BRITISH AT LIVERPOOL.

The ship was now put upon a basis of peace, the guns were dis- mounted and stowed below; so, also, were the small arms. The smokestack was whitewashed, and to the outsider we must have pre- sented the appearance of a rather trim looking merchantman. Our course was shaped for Liverpool, where we arrived without any mis- hap on the 6th of November, 1865, having made a complete circuit of the globe. After some little delay the English government ac- cepted the surrender of the Shenandoah, and the officers and crew were permitted to go ashore.

THIRTY-EIGHT VESSELS CAPTURED IN ALL.

The Shenandoah captured in all thirty-eight vessels. Scharf, in his history of the Confederate navy, states that the sum total of the claims filed against England with the Geneva Tribunal on account of eleven Confederate cruisers was $17,900,633, and all but $4,000,000 of this having been caused by the Alabama and Shenandoah; that the actual losses inflicted by the Alabama were $6,547,609, only about $60,000 greater than those charged to the Shenandoah; that no indi- rect or consequential losses were allowed by the tribunal. In the " United States case" it was alleged that in 1860 two-thirds of the commerce of New York was carried on in American bottoms, but in 1863 three-fourths was carried on in foreign bottoms; that from 1861