USS Shenandoah (1862)

The USS Shenandoah was a Confederate States Navy commerce raider during the American Civil War. Originally built in Scotland in 1863 as the British merchant vessel Sea King, she was purchased by Confederate agents and converted into a warship in international waters near Madeira in October 1864. Commissioned as the CSS Shenandoah under the command of Lieutenant Commander James Iredell Waddell, her primary mission was to disrupt Union commerce and whaling operations.

Shenandoah embarked on a cruise that took her around the world, targeting Union merchant ships in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. She was particularly successful in the Arctic whaling grounds, where she destroyed numerous whaling ships and inflicted significant economic damage on the Union whaling industry in the summer of 1865.

Unbeknownst to Waddell and his crew, the Civil War had ended in April 1865 with the surrender of the Confederate forces. News traveled slowly in that era, and the Shenandoah continued her raids until informed of the Confederate collapse by a British vessel in early August 1865.

Realizing that continuing the war was futile and potentially piratical, Waddell navigated the Shenandoah to Liverpool, England, where he surrendered the ship to British authorities on November 6, 1865. This act marked the last official surrender of a Confederate military unit. The Shenandoah was eventually sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar, and later lost at sea off the coast of Cambodia in 1879. The actions of the Shenandoah and the damage she inflicted on Union commerce led to significant claims by the United States against Great Britain in the Alabama Claims, which were settled by international arbitration.