Word: shenandoah
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Historian Tom Chaffin is the author, most recently, of Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah...
...When the steamer had come within hailing range, one of the Confederates shouted to the men gathered on the decks of the ten whaling vessels: as of that moment, all of their ships and cargoes were prizes of the CSS Shenandoah. The Confederates ordered the more than three-hundred men aboard the whaling vessels-each carried a crew of up to thirty-five-to surrender and come aboard the Shenandoah as prisoners of war. Failing that, they could go down with their vessels, all of which the Confederates threatened to destroy. Alarm rippled across the decks of the whalers. Officers...
...officers and men from the captured whalers began rowing to the Shenandoah, Confederate prize parties-small groups of seamen led by officers- commenced boarding the ten whaling vessels. Soon enough, the Confederates' plans became clear: two of the captured vessels, the James Maury and the Nile would be "ransomed"-released after their masters had signed written promises stating that their vessels' owners would later pay the Confederate government money equal to the vessels and their cargos. Once the signatures were secured, those two vessels would be allowed to return to safe harbor in San Francisco. The eight others would...
...prize parties from the Shenandoah were scurrying about all eight of the doomed vessels. In accord with the Confederates' usual procedures, all crew members and living animals were removed from each ship. Likewise, all useful equipment, gunpowder, or stores were confiscated and taken back to the Shenandoah. Afterward, the parties searched the whaling vessel's holds for any available combustibles, including whale products, pitch, tar, and turpentine. These they spread throughout the vessels. Bulkheads, the upright walls compartmentalizing each vessel were torn down and piled in cabins and forecastles; the bulkheads' destruction at once created fuel and improved draft...
...Confederate officer aboard the Shenandoah who witnessed the conflagration recalled "a scene never to be forgotten by any one who beheld it." As flames consumed them, the eight crewless vessels drifted like crazed, rudderless ghost-ships amid the ice-floes. "The red glare from the eight burning vessels shone far and wide over the drifting ice of those savage seas; the crackling of the fire as it made its devouring way through each doomed ship fell on the still air like upbraiding voices." Chaos reigned: "The sea was filled with boats driving hither and thither, with no hand to guide...