10. A few commerce raiders ran the blockade to get to sea
Besides the blockade runners, which were designed expressly to elude Union shipping, the Confederate Navy developed commerce raiders to destroy Union shipping. They too were designed to elude rather than fight Union warships, and capture Union merchant vessels and their valuable cargoes. They were equipped to keep the sea for long voyages. The most famous of them was likely CSS Alabama, which was built at Birkenhead, on the Mersey opposite Liverpool. Its construction as a Confederate warship was kept secret, and it steamed from Merseyside under the name given by its builder, Enrica. When he reached the Azores Captain Raphael Semmes, Confederate States Navy, christened it Alabama.
Alabama’s raiding cruise captured or sank 65 Union ships, a record never broken by a ship of any nation. Interestingly, the most successful commerce raider of the Confederate Navy never saw an American port. Other than its officers, most of the men who crewed the ship were British. Its career lasted just under two years before it was sunk in the Battle of Cherbourg by USS Kearsarge. Alabama raided in the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as the Atlantic, refitting and coaling in French and British ports. A private yacht owned by a prominent British businessman provided refuge for Semmes and several of his man as Kearsarge attempted to capture them, carrying them to England as free men rather than becoming Union prisoners of war.