The Sea King: The Life of James Iredell Waddell
The Sea King is the first full-length biography of Lt. Cmdr. James Iredell Waddell, CSN, commander of the CSS Shenandoah, the only Confederate vessel to sail around the world and the last entity of the Confederate States of America to fly the Confederate flag. It took 38 prizes, of which 32 were destroyed and six released on bond, and sailed some 58,000 miles in a cruise that lasted from October 1864 until August 1865, four months after the Civil War was over. The Shenandoah fired the last shots of the Civil War in the Bering Sea while attacking the US whaling fleet. The Sea King covers Waddell’s early life, his 20 years in the U.S. Navy, his years in the Confederate Navy, his return to the U.S. from Europe, his employment as the master of a Pacific Mail Company steamship and as head of Maryland’s “Oyster Navy,” a state marine police formed to guard Maryland’s rich oyster beds from poaching. The volume also includes much background material on Confederate efforts to purchase vessels in Great Britain for use as commerce raiders, to purchase ironclads to break the U.S. Navy’s blockade of the Confederacy and to fit out commerce raiders in European waters. As can be expected the majority of the book is taken up with the cruise of the CSS Shenandoah. Waddell left an unedited memoir that can be found in the James Iredell Waddell papers in the U.S. Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard. (An edited version by James D. Horan, The CSS Shenandoah: The Memoirs of Lieutenant Commanding James I. Waddell was published in 1960; republished in 1996, it is again out of print.) In addition Waddell’s executive officer, Lt. William C. Whittle Jr., kept a diary (published in 2005 as Voyage of the Shenandoah by the University of Alabama Press), so the cruise is not undocumented. The best part of the book is the cruise, where Waddell’s skills as a seaman and as a leader come to the fore on a commerce raider sailing off on its own, with its country’s harbors under blockade and with no recourse. Waddell led the crew on a voyage going from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific to the Arctic, sinking ships, avoiding U.S. Navy vessels hunting for it, only to find after much success that the war was over and they no longer had a country. Being aware of Washington’s strong feelings against commerce raiders, Waddell made the decision to disarm the vessel and sail halfway around the world to Liverpool (where Shenandoah began life as the Sea King) and give the ship and crew up to British authorities. Unfortunately the volume is marred by a number of mistakes: it’s Ulysses Simpson Grant – not Ulysses Samuel Grant; Judah K. Benjamin was not the Confederate States Attorney General when Waddell went south; Brig. Gen. John H. Winder was never head of the Confederate Secret Service; A hermaphrodite brig is called that due to its rigging, not due to the strange pumping arrangement it might have on its hull; the CSS Shenandoah was not the first Confederate vessel to be equipped with a distillation plant to make fresh water from sea water, the CSS Alabama was also so equipped. The Sea King is a good read that could have been better researched. It is an interesting biography and will do as a beginning treatment of the subject. It will be of interest to Civil War naval history buffs and readers who want to find out more about the CSS Shenandoahand its commander. For that reason it is recommended. Joseph A. Derie
Joseph A. Derie is a VMI graduate and a long time Civil War buff and military book reviewer. A retired Coast Guard officer and licensed officer of the Merchant Marine, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.
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Illustrated, maps, author’s note, bibliography, index, 297 pp., 2009. Birlinn Limited, West Newington House, 10 Newington Rd., Edinburgh UK EH9 1QS, £9.99 (~$16.20) plus shipping, www.berlinn.co.uk.