The Alabama Claims

This is the story of the last great military campaign of the American Civil War: a naval confrontation that began on the high seas in 1862, where swift, powerful Confederate raiders burnt and sank Union merchant ships in unprecedented numbers, and only came to an end in the tense formality of a diplomatic conference in Switzerland, seven years after the end of the war.

The story - part American, part British - centres on the activities of four remarkable men.

As Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory devised the plan that nearly destroyed Northern commercial shipping.

The daring, implacable, often brilliant Raphael Semmes, captain of the Alabama, was to carry out Mallory's grand scheme and left a trail of destruction across the waters of the world.

Lord John Russell, Britain's Foreign Secretary, saw in Mallory's plan an opportunity to damage his country' principal commercial rival by clandestinely supplying the Confederacy with ships and men. And Charles Francis Adams, an American aristocrat, the son and grandson of Presidents, who, for ten years, primarily as Minister to the Court of St James, used every means to thwart the efforts of Mallory, Semmes and Russell.

After two years and a staggering 68 prizes in three different oceans, the Alabama was finally hunted down and destroyed by superior Yankee firepower in the English Channel. And with her demise and the endi