I18909: Jimmie COLSON (3 Jun 1906

Notes

Raphael Semmes, Naval officer, b. in Charles County, Maryland, U.S.A., 27 September, 1809; d. at Point Clear, Alabama, 26 August, 1877. His family were descendants from one of the original Catholic colonists of Maryland, from which state he was appointed a midshipman in the U.S. Navy 1 April, 1826. He served until 1832, when he was given leave of absence extending until July, 1835, during which time he studied law and was admitted to practice. Rejoining the navy, he served with distinction, attaining the rank of commander, until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he resigned and cast his lot with the seceding state of Alabama, of which he became a citizen in 1841. He was appointed commander in the Confederate States Navy, 25 March 1861; Captain, 21 August, 1862; Rear-Admiral, 10 February, 1865; and retired to civil life after the surrender of the forces under General J. E. Johnston at Greensboro, North Carolina, 26 April, 1865. As commander of the Confederate privateer Sumter he destroyed, during six months in 1861, eighteen ships, and the next year, taking command of the Alabama, he began the famous cruise during which he captured sixty-nine vessels and inflicted a blow on the sea-carrying trade of the United States from which it has not yet recovered. After the Alabama was sunk off the French coast by the Kearsarge, 19 June, 1864, he escaped to England, whence he later returned to Virginia and was engaged in the defenses about Richmond. At the end of the war he went to his home in Mobile, Alabama, and opened a law office. He also edited a paper, and for a time was a professor in the Louisiana Military Institute. His destruction of the mercantile marine during his cruise in the privateer Alabama so embittered northern public opinion against him that, although he was pardoned with other prominent Confederate leaders under the amnesty proclamation of President Johnson, his political disabilities were never removed. He was the author of "Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War" (1851); "The Campaign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico" (1852); "The Cruise of the Alabama and Sumter" (1864); and "Memoirs of Services Afloat during the War between the States" (1869).

FUREY in U. S. Hist. Soc. Records and Studies (New York, 1911); Morning Star (New Orleans), files; Nat. Cyclo. Am. Biog., s. v.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13712b.htm.

"Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, Confederate States Navy, (1809-1877)
Raphael Semmes was born in Charles County, Maryland, on 27 September 1809. Entering the Navy as a Midshipman in 1826, he subsequently studied law and was admitted to the bar while remaining in the service. During the Mexican War, he commanded the brig USS Somers in the Gulf of Mexico. She was lost in a storm off Vera Cruz in December 1846, but Semmes was commended for his actions in that incident. While on extended leave after the war, he practiced law in Mobile, Alabama. Promoted to the rank of Commander in 1855, Semmes was assigned to Lighthouse duties until 1861, when Alabama's secession from the Union prompted him to resign from the U.S. Navy and adhere to the Confederacy.

Appointed a Commander in the Confederate Navy in April 1861, Raphael Semmes was sent to New Orleans to convert a steamer into the cruiser CSS Sumter. He ran her through the Federal blockade in June 1861 and began a career of commerce raiding that is without equal in American naval history. During Sumter's six months' operations in the West Indies and the Atlantic, he captured eighteen merchant vessels and skillfully eluded pursuing Union warships. With his ship badly in need of overhaul, he brought her to Gibraltar in January 1862 and laid her up when the arrival of Federal cruisers made a return to sea impossible.

After taking himself and many of his officers to England, Semmes was promoted to the rank of Captain and given command of the newly-built cruiser CSS Alabama. From August 1862 until June 1864, Semmes took his ship through the Atlantic, into the Gulf of Mexico, around the Cape of Good Hope and into the East Indies, capturing some sixty merchantmen and sinking one Federal warship, USS Hatteras. At the end of her long cruise, Alabama was blockaded at Cherbourg, France, while seeking repairs. On 19 June 1864, Semmes took her to sea to fight the Union cruiser USS Kearsarge and was wounded when she was sunk in action. Rescued by the British yacht Dearhound, he went to England, recovered and made his way back to the Confederacy.

Semmes was promoted to Rear Admiral in February 1865 and commanded the James River Squadron during the last months of the Civil War. When the fall of Richmond, Virginia, forced the destruction of his ships, he was made a Brigadier General and led his sailors as an infantry force. Briefly imprisoned after the conflict, he worked as a teacher and newspaper editor until returning to Mobile, where he pursued a legal career. Raphael Semmes died on 30 August 1877.

Commanded:
CSS Sumter (1861-1862)
CSS Alabama (1862-1864)

United States Navy 1837-1860. Confederate States Navy 1861-1865. As Commander of the Confederate ship "Alabama" he executed the mission to inflict the greatest injury to the enemy's commerce in the shortest time.

In the span of three years during the Civil War Raphael Semmes, admiral, general and lawyer, stole the hearts of the South, won the fear and respect of the seafaring nations of the world and inflicted a $6,000,000 wound to Federal shipping. As captain of the "Sumter" and the "Alabama" Semmes out-maneuvered and jauntily defied the vastly superior Federal naval forces to scourge the seas of vessels carrying cargoes vital to the Federal cause. Semmes' successful career of preying on unarmed merchant vessels concluded with the dramatic battle in which the Union ship "Keasarge" overwhelmed the "Alabama," leaving it to settle in the mud off the coast of France.

Emerging as one of the most popular military figures of the Civil War, Semmes owed much of his fame to his humanity to prisoners as to his brilliant naval tactics. Many a Yankee skipper felt the keen edge of Semmes' sarcasm but none reported an uncalled-for use of steel. Tried after the war for cruelty to prisoners, Semmes was dramatically cleared when captain after captain testified he had been "complete in his regard for the rights and privileges" of his prisoners.

Orphaned at ten, Semmes embarked on a training cruise as a United States Naval Midshipman at fifteen, learning the poorly charted waters of the West Indies. Later Semmes used this knowledge to elude the guns of his former fellow midshipmen. After losing the "Alabama" Semmes returned to the Confederacy and late in the war was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Confederate States Army. At the close of the war his parole papers listed him as both an admiral and a general. A native of Maryland, Semmes was a resident of Mobile both before and after the war.

Alabama Hall of Fame, 1968
Elected 1953
http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/r_semmes.html.

Raphael Semmes

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was born in Charles County, Maryland on September 27, 1809. In February of 1861, Semmes resigned from the U.S. Naval Commission, and headed south. He helped in the capture of Sumter, and commanded it afterward. In 1862 he took command of the British-built Alabama. Semmes terrorized the Union's merchant marine on every body of water from the West Indies east to Singapore until the U.S.S. Kearsarge sank his ship near Cherbourg on June 19, 1864. Semmes destroyed or captured more than 80 vessels. Partly as a result of his depredations, the U.S. merchant marine lost its preeminence. He wrote Confederate Raider "Alabama" in 1869, and several other books later.
Bibliography: Davis, Evangeline and Burke, Rebel Raider: A Biography of Admiral Semmes (1966); Roberts, Walter A., Semmes of the "Alabama" (1938); Summersell, Charles Grayson, The Cruise of the C.S.S. "Sumter" (1965).
http://library.thinkquest.org/3055/netscape/people/semmes.html.

BORN: 1809 in Charles County. MD.
DIED: 1877 in Mobile, AL.
CAMPAIGNS: Served as head of the Confederate Lighthouse Services; as Captain of the CSS ALABAMA; Responsible for 55 prizes; Captured and sunk more than any other Confederate cruiser; Also sank the USS HATTERAS (A warship) in Richmond in 1865.
HIGHEST RANK ACHIEVED: Rear Admiral and Brigadier General
(Later appointment never made official).
BIOGRAPHY
Raphael Semmes was born on September 27, 1809, in Charles County, Maryland. He was appointed a midshipman in 1826, and rose through the ranks as he studied law between cruises, being admitted to the bar in 1834. Serving in the Mexican War, he barely survived drowning when his ship capsized. In 1849, he moved to Mobile, Alabama, and wrote about his war experiences in "Service Afloat" and "Ashore During the Mexican War." Promoted to commander in 1855, he resigned his commission in the US Navy when Alabama seceded. A commander in the Confederate States Navy, he was appointed head of the Confederate lighthouse Service. Semmes felt that the Confederacy's small navy needed to include commerce destroyers. With support from Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory, he brought a steamer from New Orleans and converted it into the cruiser, the "Sumter," the first Confederate commerce destroyer. He spent six months at sea, during which he captured 17 American merchant ships. The ship was decommissioned and sold in 1862, and the Confederacy obtained more cruisers. Semmes was assigned to one of these, the CSS "Alabama." From August 1862 to June 1864, the ship helped capture and sunk 55 ships, more than any other Confederate cruiser. Admired among Confederates, Semmes was viewed as a pirate by the Union, and US Navy Secretary Gideon Welles made his capture a top priority. Semmes' efforts on behalf of the Confederacy contributed to a decline in his health. In a battle with the USS "Kearsarge" near France, the "Alabama" was defeated and 19 of its crewmembers were killed or drowned. Semmes was rescued, however, and promoted to rear admiral. When he saw little naval action, he organized his sailors and naval cadets into a brigade; and Confederate President Jefferson Davis made him a brigadier general, although the appointment was not made official. Semmes and his sailors were serving with Maj. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston when the army surrendered at Durham, North Carolina. Arrested and brought to Washington on December 15, 1865, he was tried for treason and piracy, and was investigated for charges of mistreating prisoners and violating rules of war. All charges were dropped, and he was released after being detained for three months. Nevertheless, he was unable to keep his positions as college professor and newspaper editor, apparently due to harassment from the government. He returned to Mobile, Alabama; practiced law and published "Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States." Semmes died in Mobile, on August 30, 1877.
http://www.multied.com/Bio/CWcGENS/CSASemes.html.

Admirable admiral

Duncan Spencer reviewed a book by John M. Taylor about my great-great-grandfather, Raphael Semmes (" 'Semmes' is saga of a naval raider," Civil War page, Jan. 31). Interestingly, Warren Spencer, professor of history emeritus at the University of Georgia, wrote perhaps the most scholarly book about Raphael Semmes. The book, "Raphael Semmes - The Philosophical Mariner," (University of Alabama Press, 1997) captures my ancestor's personality and depth. The book includes accounts of his service in the Seminole Wars, on Gen. Winfield Scott's staff during the Mexican War and aboard the Confederate cruisers Sumter and Alabama.

Warren Spencer credits my ancestor as one of the persons who inspired him to complete the book and states, "His personality comes through all of his writings; his strong intellect constantly challenged me. I have learned from him the meaning of honor and the value of sacrificing one's self for the sake of one's convictions. My travelthroughRaphael Semmes' life has, in the sunset of my career, given me a new meaning to this period of my own existence. And for that, I thank Raphael Semmes."

In command of the CSS Sumter and the CSS Alabama, Semmes boarded more than 500 vessels of all flags; captured 86 Union flagged vessels; sank the USS Hatteras; took 2,000 prisoners, including 140 U.S. Marines; and commissioned one captured ship astheUSSTuscaloosa. (Auburn had not yet emerged as a great university town.) In doing so, he lost not one prisoner to accident or disease. Excepting an officer killed during a hunting trip, none of his own crew was killed until the engagement with the USS Kearsarge.

The unfortunate use of the term "quirky" by Duncan Spencer to describe Raphael Semmes detracts from the otherwise fairly good review.

In any event, Warren Spencer, more than any other author, captures Raphael Semmes' character. While he and I disagree on some points, his book is entertaining and factual.

OLIVER J. SEMMES III
Navarre, Fla.
Letters to the Editor http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040211-100540-4878r.htm

My Southern Family

Jimmie COLSON

3 Jun 1906 - 27 Apr 1981

ID Number: I18909

Sources

GOSPATRIC DUNBAR 4th Earl of Dunbar

____ - 1166

ID Number: I61521

Sources

Agatha ELTONHEAD

ABT 1612 - ____

ID Number: I59975

Notes

Sources

Charles JACKSON JR.

William MARTIN

1774 - 1830

ID Number: I76495

Sources

Caroline SCOTT

Adm. Raphael SEMMES C.S.N.

27 Sep 1809 - 30 Aug 1877

ID Number: I63891

Notes

Sources

MARGARET TAME

-

ID Number: I74125

Sources

Robert Andrew WADDELL

26 Dec 1840 - 3 Jan 1890

ID Number: I26146

Sources

My Southern Family

Jimmie COLSON

3 Jun 1906 - 27 Apr 1981

ID Number: I18909

Sources

GOSPATRIC DUNBAR 4th Earl of Dunbar

____ - 1166

ID Number: I61521

Sources

Agatha ELTONHEAD

ABT 1612 - ____

ID Number: I59975

Notes

Sources

Charles JACKSON JR.

William MARTIN

1774 - 1830

ID Number: I76495

Sources

Caroline SCOTT

Adm. Raphael SEMMES C.S.N.

27 Sep 1809 - 30 Aug 1877

ID Number: I63891

Notes

Sources

MARGARET TAME

____ - ____

ID Number: I74125

Sources

Robert Andrew WADDELL

26 Dec 1840 - 3 Jan 1890

ID Number: I26146

Sources

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