Confederate Navy

Ships

Confederate Navy commerce raiders were also used with great success to disrupt U.S. merchant shipping. The most famous of them was the screw sloop-of-war CSS Alabama, a warship secretly built for the Confederacy in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, United Kingdom. She was launched as Enrica but was commissioned as CSS Alabama just off the Azores by her captain, Raphael Semmes. She began her world-famous raiding career under his command, accounting for 65 U.S. ships, a record that still remains unbeaten by any ship in naval warfare. CSS Alabama's crew was mostly from Liverpool, and the cruiser never once dropped anchor in a Confederate port, though she sank a blockading Union gunboat off the coast of Texas. She was sunk in June 1864 by USS Kearsarge at the Battle of Cherbourg outside the port of Cherbourg, France.