Civil War & Hawaii
October 11, 2007 5:45 am > MAUI TODAY, > Maui Yesterdays |
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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY - MOKU: Ship, boat HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY - “Cross the sea as a bird.”
October 11, 1864: During the Civil War, the CSS Shenendoah changes course and decides not to head for Hawaii, for fear of being overtaken by Union ships waiting in port at Pearl Harbor and Lahaina. The Confederate ship was on a heading south from the Aleutian Islands toward Hawaii, when its captain, James Waddell, thought better of it and changed course toward islands off the coast of Mexico and Central America, with the intent of destroying any Union ships sailing from the West Coast of the US to Hawaii.
The Shenendoah was built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1863. Many in Europe at that time were very sympathetic to the Confederate cause - slavery - and supported the Confederacy by paying for the ship. It sailed from Liverpool with a full crew to circumnavigate the globe (the only Confederate ship to do so), to wreak havoc on international shipping which supplied the Northern Union, and to disrupt commerce of goods to other countries from the North. The idea, of course, was to hurt the Union economy.
The Shenendoah succeeded spectacularly. Waddell and his crew pioneered guerrilla warfare, submarine tactics, observation with balloons and precision cannon shot. In its 18 months at sea, Shenendoah sank 36 war and commercial ships of the North, and barely received a scratch. Its voyage to the Aleutians was intended to destroy the Union’s whaling industry; the bulk of its boats were hunting the seas around those islands. In fact, the Shenandoah sank them all, a daunting but not unexpected result given that whaling ships were not armed for battle at sea with any mammals other than unarmed whales. The effect on business in Lahaina that year was severe, and the number of whaling ships visiting port dwindled.Every Union Navy ship was given one goal: to hunt down and destroy the Shenandoah. Commercial shipping costs soared, as insurance charges climbed, and businesses paid for arms to be installed onboard. A ransom exceeding $1 million was offered for the sinking of the Shenandoah. No one ever touched her.In 1865, Waddell learned from a passing English ship off the coast of South America that General Ulysses S. Grant had kicked General Robert E. Lee’s butt in battle — again, and the North had won the Civil War. The Shenandoah sailed back to England and surrendered.
