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This digital book includes an annotated listing of select bibliographies for research on the American Civil War (added 2011)

PREFACE.
A number of publications have appeared, first and last, concerning the
author and his career, as was naturally to have been expected. The
_Alabama_ was the first steamship in the history of the world--the
defective little _Sumter_ excepted--that w... More

This digital book includes an annotated listing of select bibliographies for research on the American Civil War (added 2011)

PREFACE.
A number of publications have appeared, first and last, concerning the
author and his career, as was naturally to have been expected. The
_Alabama_ was the first steamship in the history of the world--the
defective little _Sumter_ excepted--that was let loose against the
commerce of a great commercial people. The destruction which she caused
was enormous. She not only alarmed the enemy, but she alarmed all the
other nations of the earth which had commerce afloat, as they could not be
sure that a similar scourge, at some future time, might not be let loose
against themselves. The _Alabama_, in consequence, became famous. It was
the fame of steam. As a matter of course, she attracted the attention of
the book-makers--those cormorants ever on the lookout for a "speculation."
A number of ambitious _literateurs_ entered the seductive field. But it
was easier, as they soon found, to enter the field than to explore it, and
these penny-a-liners all made miserable failures,--not even excepting the
London house of Saunders, Otley & Co., to whom the author was induced to
loan his journals, in the hope that something worthy of his career might
be produced. To those who have chanced to see the "Log of the _Sumter_ and
_Alabama_," produced by that house, it will be unnecessary to say that the
author had no hand in its preparation. He did not write a line for it, nor
had he any interest whatever in the sale of it, as the loan of his
journals had been entirely gratuitous. So far as his own career was
concerned, the author would gladly have devolved the labor of the
historian on other shoulders, if this had been possible. But it did not
seem to be possible, after the experiments that had been made. With all
the facilities afforded the London house referred to, a meagre and barren
record was the result. The cause is sufficiently obvious. The cruise of a
ship is a biography. The ship becomes a personification. She not only

"Walks the waters like a thing of life,"

but she speaks in moving accents to those capable of interpreting her. But
her interpreter must be a seaman, and not a landsman. He must not only be
a seaman, he must have made the identical cruise which he undertakes to
describe. It will be seen, hence, that the career of the author was a
sealed book to all but himself. A landsman could not even interpret his
journals, written frequently in the hieroglyphics of the sea. A line, or a
bare mark made by himself, which to other eyes would be meaningless would
for him be fraught with the inspiration of whole pages.

Besides, the _Alabama_ had an inside as well as an outside life. She was a
microcosm. If it required a seaman to interpret her as to her outside
life, much more did it require one to give an intelligible view of the
little world that she carried in her bosom. No one but an eye-witness, and
that witness himself a sailor, could unveil to an outside world the
domestic mysteries of the every-day life of Jack, and portray him in his
natural colors, as he worked and as he played. The following pages may,
therefore, be said to be the first attempt to give anything like a
truthful picture of the career of the author upon the high seas, during
the late war, to the public. In their preparation the writer has discarded
the didactic style of the historian, and adopted that of memoir writing,
as better suited to his subject. This style gave him more latitude in the
description of persons and events, and relieved him from some of the
fetters of a mere writer of history. There are portions of the work,
however, purely historical, and these have been treated with the gravity
and dignity which became them. In short, the author has aimed to produce
what the title of his book imports--an historical memoir of his services
afloat during the war. ........

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