
Sea of Gray
The Around-the-world Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah
Farrar Straus & Giroux · Print & ebook · May 29, 2007
Assembled from hundreds of original documents, including intimate shipboard journals kept by Shenandoah officers, Sea of Gray is a masterful narrative of men at sea The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay.
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- Who it’s for
- A Civil War sea narrative shaped by shipboard journals and an astonishingly long voyage.
- Themes
- Civil War at sea, Confederate commerce raiding, Postwar peril and flight
- Genres
- Civil War Era, Maritime History & Piracy, Naval History
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Assembled from hundreds of original documents, including intimate shipboard journals kept by Shenandoah officers, Sea of Gray is a masterful narrative of men at sea The sleek, 222-foot, black auxiliary steamer Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, ostensibly bound for Bombay. The subterfuge was ended off the shores of Madeira, where the ship was outfitted for war.
Continue reading
The newly christened CSS Shenandoah then commenced the last, most quixotic sea story of the Civil War: the 58,000-mile, around-the-world cruise of the Confederacy's second most successful commerce raider. Before its voyage was over, thirty-two Union merchant and whaling ships and their cargoes would be destroyed. But it was only after ship and crew embarked on the last leg of their journey that the excursion took its most fearful turn. Four months after the Civil War was over, the Shenandoah's Captain Waddell finally learned he was, and had been, fighting without cause or state. In the eyes of the world, he had gone from being an enemy combatant to being a pirate—a hangable offense. Now fearing capture and mutiny, with supplies quickly dwindling, Waddell elected to camouflage the ship, circumnavigate the globe, and attempt to surrender on English soil. "A superb account of how the Confederate raider Shenandoah brought the American Civil War to the farthest reaches of the world." -- Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower and Sea of Glory
War at Sea
A Civil War sea narrative shaped by shipboard journals and an astonishingly long voyage.
Come here for
- Naval history told through officers’ intimate shipboard journals
- A Civil War story unfolding far beyond familiar shores
Expect
- A 58,000-mile commerce-raiding voyage and its uneasy aftermath
- The unnerving shift from combatant to possible pirate
Where it sits
| Civil War Era | 71% |
|---|---|
| Maritime History & Piracy | 45% |
| Naval History | 42% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Naval History
- Warships & Submarines
- Civil War Era
- Authors
- Tom Chaffin
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- May 29, 2007
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Civil War at sea · Confederate commerce raiding · Postwar peril and flight
- Reading lane
- Naval History