Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/340

 328 Southern Historical Society Papers.

The daily calculation of the ship's position was very accurate, when that fact is considered.

I received a pilot after night, and when he was informed of the character of the vessel, he said: " I was reading a few days ago of her being in the Arctic ocean." I asked for American news. He said the war had gone against the South. That was in November. Lee's surrender was in April.

"The quiet satisfaction seen in all countenances," says Captain Waddell, "for our success in reaching a European port was unmis- takable! "

We should think, indeed, there was cause. The chief danger was now past!

SAFE IN THE MERSEY.

On the morning of the 6th of November, 1865, the Shenandoah steamed up the Mersey, bearing aloft the Confederate flag. A few moments after she had anchored, a British naval officer boarded her to ascertain the name of the steamer and he gave Captain Wad- dell official information that the American war had terminated. No longer was there any Confederacy! The Southern States were a part of the United States!

The Confederate flag representing then neither people nor country an emblem of an era that had closed in the history of mankind was then sorrowfully lowered, this historic act taking place at 10 A. M. on the 6th of November, 1865. The vessel was then given in charge to the British government.

For a day or two some correspondence was in progress between the British and American authorities in regard to the Shenandoah, her officers and crew. But on the 8th of November the crew were suffered to depart, and soon the British government turned the ves- sel over to the United States authorities, by whom she was sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar, and later she was lost at sea.

She was the only vessel that carried the Confederate flag around the world, and she bore it at her mast head seven months after the surrender of the Southern armies and the obliteration of the South- ern Confederacy.

In her cruise of thirteen months, she ran 58,000 miles, and met with no accident, and for a period of eight months, she did not drop her anchor. She destroyed more vessels than any other ship of war known to history, except alone the Alabama, and inflicted severe loss on the commerce of the United States.