OK, here we go. Home now and quoting directly from "The National Encyclpedia" (A dictionary of Universal knowledge), published by William MacKenzie, 69 Ludgate Hill E.C. circa 1880. I have manually typed it as it was not possible to scan and OCR it so there may be some trascription errors. A lot of the grammar is as I have posted though and is very dated, as you will see!

The Alabama and the Alabama claims

The Alabama was a vessel which obtained great notoriety during the American civil war and was the cause of a long-standing difference between the United States and Great Britain. The vessel, built by Messrs. Laird of Birkenhead and sailed surreptitiously from the Mersey on the 31st July 1862, known then simply as “number 290”. She proceeded to Terceira, one of the Western Islands, where she was supplied with guns, coals and stores from a vessel which had been sent from London to meet her, and was then taken in charge of by Captain Semmes and some officers, who named her Alabama and hoisted the Confederate flag. The crew consisted of about eighty men and the armament of eight 32-pounders; and the vessel had been built chiefly for speed and for the purpose of capturing defenceless merchant ships, her subsequent career in nearly every part of the world was disastrous to the shipping of the Northern States. Several fast-sailing cruisers were sent after her, but she eluded all attempts at capture for nearly two years, in which time she had captured and burned sixty-five vessels, and destroyed property to the value of 4,000,000 dollars.   In June 1864 however she was sunk near Cherbourg after a long engagement with the United States steamer Kearsage. Altogether the career of the Alabama was quite unprecedented and proved how much injury may be inflicted on a mercantile nation by means of a single vessel built almost entirely for speed. It was not so much by the amount of property destroyed, large as that was, as by the heavy insurance for the war risks to which she subjected them, and still more by the difficulty she caused them in obtaining freights, that the Alabama inflicted the greatest injury on American shipowners. She effected all this without once having entered a Confederate port; and the Americans of all classes never forgave the English for having allowed he to escape, in spite of information which had been given to the government as to her character, but which it seems was not acted upon until too late, in consequence of the illness of Sir J Harding, the Queens’s advocate. A convention agreed by Lord Clarendon and Mr Revardy Johnson, an American ambassador sent to England almost specifically for the purpose in 1868, proposing to refer the whole matter to arbitration, was almost unanimously rejected by the American senate – the general feeling in America being, that as a preliminary step, the English must admit they were wrong in acknowledging the Confederates as belligerents at all. Another attempt to re-open negotiations in 1869 led to no result; but in 1871 a joint high commission was was appointed to endeavour to put an end to the long-pending dispute. The commissioners met at Washington and after several conferences a treaty was concluded which referred the decision of the question to a court of arbitration composed of five persons; namely a representative from each of the two interested parties, and three members to be appointed – one by the King of Italy, a second by the president of the Swiss Confederation, and a third by the emperor of Brazil. The material bases of procedure was regulated by the treaty, and to the arbitrators, who were to assemble at Geneva, was left the task of thoroughly examining the American complaints. Added to this arrangement, in the treaty England expressed, in a friendly spirit, her regret at the escape of the Alabama and the acts she had committed. It was, of course, expected that the cause of the dispute would be settled in a manner satisfactory to the Americans; but for many months the matter was in a very critical position, in consequence of the American government bringing forward claims which the English could not admit. They wished for the arbitrators to decide not only on the direct losses which had been sustained through the vessel (including the expense of sending their men-of-war to endeavour to capture her), but also on the indirect losses – such as those arising from transfer of the American commercial navy to the English flag, from the increased cost of insurance, and even for expenses incurred through the prolongation of the war. Endeavours were made in vain to induce the American government to withdraw these “indirect claims” but they persistently refused. The British government, determined. if possible to save the treaty, and establish the principle of arbitration, despatched their representatives to Geneva at the time named – 15th of June 1872 – but would have withdrawn had not the “indirect claimes” been waived. Without, however, waiting to hear the English view of the matter at all, the arbitrators decided that these claims were such as they would not take cognisance of. They were accordingly withdrawn from by the American agent, after consultation with his government, and the arbitration proceeded with. The judgement of the arbitrators was signed on the 14th of September, 1872, and it awarded 15,500,000 dollars (about 8,229,166 UK pounds) to the American government in final satisfaction of all claims, including interest.


If anyone wants a photo of the relevent pages I will happily oblige.

One point I find interesting. I have heard versions where Liverpool or Glasgow supplied the guns and men. Here it says they were supplied by an English ship in the Azores. Well I never :-)