Qualla: Battle of Cherbourg (1864)

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Édouard Manet, Public domain. Sunday morning, 19 June 1864. Crowds stood on the cliffs above Cherbourg to watch. Excursion trains had brought them out from Paris. They saw two American warships, one Union and one Confederate, steam in slow circles around each other a few miles offshore, edging out of French territorial waters, then turning to fight. The painter Edouard Manet sketched what he could see and would later make two oil paintings from those sketches. The fight lasted just over an hour. When it was done, the Confederate raider Alabama had a hole below her waterline that the Union sloop Kearsarge had punched through with eleven-inch Dahlgren shot, and she was sinking stern-first into the English Channel.

Image: Édouard Manet | Public domain

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): A Tired Raider in a Neutral Port

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederick James Smyth / After Edwin Weedon, Public domain. CSS Alabama had been at sea for nearly two years and had captured or sunk more than sixty Union merchant ships. Her boilers were burned out, her seams were open, the copper on her bottom was peeling away in sheets. Her executive officer, John McIntosh Kell, said she was loose at ...

Image: Frederick James Smyth / After Edwin Weedon | Public domain

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): Chain Mail in the Channel

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Xanthus Russell Smith, Public domain. The two ships were similar in size, but not in protection. Kearsarge carried two eleven-inch Dahlgren guns that threw 166-pound solid shot, four 32-pounders, and a Parrott rifle. Alabama had six 32-pounders broadside and two heavier pivot guns. The decisive difference was hidden ...

Image: Xanthus Russell Smith | Public domain

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): An Hour and Eleven Minutes

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Alabama left harbor under escort of the French ironclad Couronne, whose orders were to make sure the fight happened outside French waters. Kearsarge withdrew, turned, hoisted the Union jack, and waited for the range to close. Alabama fired first, then kept firing, more than 370 r...

Image: Andreas F. Borchert | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): The Deerhound's Choice

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julian Oliver Davidson, Public domain. Captain Winslow had personally asked the yacht to help evacuate Alabama's crew. Instead her owner, John Lancaster, took Semmes and fourteen of his officers aboard, turned east, and made for Southampton without delivering the prisoners. Kearsarge's crew begged Winslow for permissi...

Image: Julian Oliver Davidson | Public domain

Battle of Cherbourg (1864): What the Sea Kept

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rear Admiral J. W. Schmidt [1], Public domain. When word reached the northeast, Northerners celebrated. Edouard Manet's painting The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama went on view at the Galerie Cadart in Paris before the year was out. It hangs now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. American sailors made a sea shanty ca...

Image: Rear Admiral J. W. Schmidt [1] | Public domain