This may not appear a very spectacular painting at first sight. The palette is rather muted, the battle indeterminate and set curiously in the background. It’s almost as if the artist himself doesn’t clearly know what’s going on. He seems more interested in capturing the waves and perhaps the smoke than the ships. In fact, the sea fills up more than two thirds of the canvas. Two ships appear on the horizon but the smaller vessel in the foreground is set way below it. In other words, the perspective is above the waves looking downwards, as if the viewer is also on a ship.
And what of the battle itself? The identities of the fighting ships are not easily discernible, being largely obscured by smoke, though the nearest is evidently sinking. The ship on the extreme right seems to be steaming on a different course. She is taking an interest in the battle but does not seem to be directly involved. The boat in the foreground that appears to be on her way to pick up survivors is clearly not a warship, but a small coastal vessel. She is flying a French tricolour and also a white flag with a blue border, denoting her role as a French harbour pilot. These flags indicate it is on a French sea that the battle is being waged. The tricolour is also a clue to the identity of the artist, one better known for painting outrageous nudes such as ‘Olympia’ and ‘Lunch on the Grass’. So what event could have distracted Edouard Manet from his studies of the Parisian demimonde? The answer is in the work’s blandly descriptive title: ‘The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama’.
It’s often forgotten that the American Civil War was also a naval war. Even more forgotten is that it was played out not just in the coastal waters of the American continent but worldwide, including in European waters. There were at least fifty battles over the course of the four-year conflict in which warships were involved. These ranged from wooden-hulled river steamers and oceanic cruisers to ironclad floating batteries and coastal monitors, and even a hand-cranked submersible. Perhaps the most famous battle of the war was that of Hampton Roads in March 1862, when the South’s improvised ironclad Merrimack went up against the North’s innovative Monitor, a ship that heralded the birth of the turreted warship. However, the combatants in Manet’s painting were of a more standard design; wooden-hulled screw-steamers with three-masted sailing rigs.
The ship in a sinking condition is the British-built commerce raider CSS Alabama. She was one of a number of ships clandestinely ordered from private French and British shipyards by James Dunwood Bulloch, the Confederate South’s special agent; an individual regarded in Washington as the ‘most dangerous man’ in Europe. Bulloch had been despatched by the Confederate Secretary for the Navy, Stephen Russell Mallory. At the outset of the war, Mallory found his naval options limited by a blockade of its ports by the Union’s larger navy and a lack of established shipyards. Purchasing ships overseas potentially overcame both these difficulties. Moreover, the Confederate navy could benefit from the latest foreign shipbuilding technology; ironclad and turreted warships; and hopefully gain a technological advantage over the numerically superior enemy. However, there was a problem. Britain and France were officially neutral, and for their governments to allow the private sale of warships to one side would be to risk a serious confrontation with the other. Bulloch’s task was to ensure that such ships did not come to the attention of the authorities. To do this, he laundered his operations through the Liverpool offices of the cotton trader Fraser, Trenholm & Co. This company acted as a broker with various private shipbuilders up and down the country. Chief among these was the Birkenhead firm of Lairds, the builders of the Alabama.
Lairds was a pioneer in iron ship-building, but Alabama was constructed with a wooden hull, perhaps as it was deemed easier to disguise her true purpose. She was designed as a screw-sloop, with a ‘barque’ rig to supplement her steam propulsion, and a retractable propeller, a system which served to lesson drag when under sail.[1] To the average man in the street, Laird’s hull no. 290 would have looked like just another merchant ship, but to those in the know, shipyard hands, sailors, and Union spies, she was clearly a ship destined for military purpose. By the time the vacillating British government acted on this Union intelligence, however, the Alabama had taken to the water and sailed for the Azores. There, she was met by a Confederate supply ship carrying her commanding officer, Captain Raphael Semmes, along with her weapons; six 32-pdr cannon, a 100lb ‘Blakely rifle’, and one 8-inch shot gun.[2] Semmes had already made a name for himself in commerce raiding but had been forced to surrender his previous vessel at Gibraltar. His first job on boarding the Alabama was to persuade the largely British crew that had sailed her out of England to take up the Confederate cause.
Thus, on August 24th 1862, began Alabama’s remarkable two-year, transoceanic campaign against Union commerce, during which time she captured or sank more than 60 ships, six of which were taken while she was under sail. One of her most spectacular successes was against the USS Hatteras, a box-paddle steamer encountered while enforcing the blockade of Galveston in January the following year. The story goes that the Alabama disguised herself as a British warship until the two ships were within half a mile of one another, before revealing her true identity and battering the Union ship into submission at close range. This action off the Texas coast was the closest the Alabama ever got to a home port. During her lengthy campaign at sea, she ranged as far south as Cape Town and as far east as Borneo.
Union warships had been on Alabama’s trail ever since she’d left Liverpool. One of these pursuers was the USS Kearsarge, captained by John A. Winslow. Outwardly, the Kearsarge was similar in dimensions and design to the Alabama. Rather than having a retractable screw, she had one that could be disengaged from the engine. Her primary advantage lay in the fact that she was a purpose-built warship that had been armed in port rather than at sea. Her main armament of two pivot-mounted 10-inch ‘Dalhgren’ guns, which fired 150-pound explosive shells, were far superior to that carried aboard the Confederate ship.[3] On June 11th 1864, Alabama entered Cherbourg, much in need to a refit after crossing the entire Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape. Unfortunately, neutrality laws limited her period of stay in port and prevented her from receiving any assistance from the French naval dockyard. A few days after her arrival, the Union ship provocatively steamed into port to size up her Southern foe, thereafter taking station outside the harbour.
Semmes knew that his ship was inferior to his opponent in weaponry as well as seaworthiness. The fact that he chose to challenge Winslow to a duel may have been because he did not want to lose another ship to internment. On 19th June, Semmes boldly took Alabama to sea. The action lasted just over one hour, during which time the two American ships circled one another eight times firing their cannon to starboard. Hampered by unreliable ordnance, the Confederate ship was soon bettered by Kearsarge’s more effectual gunnery. As his ship began to founder, Semmes sent a boat carrying Master’s Mate George Fulham over to Winslow, requesting his assistance in rescuing Alabama’s crew. About 70 of the ship’s complement, including her captain survived the sinking.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 