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Australian Confederates

Amazon.com Price:  $13.42 (as of 06/05/2019 03:20 PST- Details)

Description

In the summer of 1865, when a Confederate warship sailed into the port of Melbourne, 42 Australian men secretly enlisted to fight for the South within the American Civil War—That is their story

When the notorious raider Shenandoah—scourge of the Yankee merchant fleet—dropped anchor, the fledgling colony of Victoria used to be taken by surprise, and the Confederates had no way of knowing whether they would be hailed as heroes or hanged as pirates. To the rebels’ surprise, Melbourne took them to its heart. Victorians came in their thousands to seek advice from the ship, and its officers were feted as celebrities. Meanwhile, in defiance of the law against foreign warships recruiting in a neutral port, 42 men were smuggled aboard in dead of night and, once at sea, signed up to enroll in the Confederate Navy. For Australia—not yet a nation—1865 used to be a watershed year in an age of gold rushes, bushrangers, disputes between rival colonies, and fears of foreign invasion. For war-torn The united states, it used to be the turning point within the deadliest conflict within the nation’s history. After the defeat at Gettysburg, the tide had turned against the Confederacy but the South used to be made up our minds to fight on, and, within the war at sea, the Shenandoah used to be the last best hope. The Shenandoah‘s mission used to be to damage the North’s economy by attacking its commercial fleet, and, under the command of Captain James Waddell, the raider went on to wipe out almost all the New England whaling fleet. On learning that Robert E. Lee had surrendered, Waddell refused to imagine the cause used to be lost. The Shenandoah continued harrying the Yankee fleet and fired the last shot of the war after capturing, burning, and ransoming 38 Union ships and taking more than 1,000 prisoners. On accepting at last that the war had ended, the Confederates sailed around the globe to England and surrendered to the neutral British. Some 120 Australians are known to have fought within the American Civil War, on both sides. Of the 42 men who signed on in Melbourne as petty officers, seamen, and marines, some returned home, others dropped out of sight and one died aboard ship—the last man to die within the service of the Confederacy. That is their story.

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