A unique battle flag hangs in the Confederate Museum in Richmond, Va. It's the flag of the only ship in the southern navy to have circumnavigated the globe. The one that fluttered as cannons fired the final volleys in the war. The last to be lowered in surrender.
And the only Civil War ensign -- Yankee or Rebel --to have flown in action in Alaska.
The 150th anniversary of the first shot of America's deadliest conflict has been widely noted this month. Few people are aware, however, that the last shot was fired off Alaska's shores.
Yet the roar of the guns of the CSS Shenandoah -- like those of Fort Sumter -- continue to echo in our world after a century and a half.
STEALTH RAIDER
Built as a supposed troop transport in supposedly neutral Great Britain, the 1,160-ton screw steamer Sea King was designed with subterfuge in mind. Its smokestack could be lowered, its masts and sails switched to look like a different ship.
In October 1864, it was secretly transferred to the Confederate Navy in a black-ops rendezvous off the coast of Africa. A skeleton crew rigged the ship for battle and renamed it Shenandoah.
Its mission was to disrupt Union shipping and commerce. It burned American-flagged ships in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans. Then it sailed into the Pacific and laid a course for the Bering Sea.
The extensive New England whaling fleet off Alaska included some of the biggest and most expensive vessels of the day, the 19th century version of factory ships. Their lucrative cargo of oil was essential for modern life in the nation's growing cities.
But the whaling grounds were in territory claimed by the Czar. Union battleships were thousands of miles away. No one envisioned a Confederate assault amid the ice floes of Russian America.
The Shenandoah had speed, power and guns that could fire a half-mile with some accuracy. The whalers gave little or no resistance. In 12 months, the raider captured or sank 38 American ships and took 1,000 prisoners -- without a single battle casualty on either side.
Lynn Schooler of Juneau is the author of perhaps the best-known history of the Shenandoah, "The Last Shot: The Incredible Story of the C.S.S. Shenandoah and the True Conclusion of the American Civil War" (Ecco/HarperCollins). He noted that many of the captives, attracted by the spunk and spirit of the rebel ship, freely signed onto their captor's crew.
"The officers, in particular, were a charming bunch of fellows," Schooler said in a recent interview. "Well-educated, young, enthusiastic -- and silver-tongued."
Evidence of their charm emerged in accounts of a stop for repairs in Melbourne, Australia. In those days it was the custom to give a button from your uniform to a lady with whom you had ''dallied.'' When the Shenandoah's officers shipped out, Schooler noted, their uniforms were held together with pins and string.
For the captured whaling crews, there were also economics at play. No ship meant no pay. If they joined the Shenandoah, however, they could share in the spoils.
Navy pay was determined by a warship's profits, similar to a crewman's cut of the catch on modern fishing boats, Schooler said.
"They were like crabbers, long-liners."
Schooler has been a commercial fisherman. He became fascinated with the Shenandoah saga as a bookworm teenager in Anchorage when he came across an article about it in an old Alaska Sportsman magazine.
As an adult, he researched "The Last Shot" by tracing as much of the ship's path as he could.
"I'm not a Civil War buff," he said. "But as I traveled around the world, it became clear how really global the conflict was. (The history of the Shenandoah) is still common knowledge down in Melbourne. I saw three private boats with that name in the harbor. There's a prominent mural of the ship on the side of a restaurant. That surprised me because hardly any Americans know about it."
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