5145 x 3450 px | 43,6 x 29,2 cm | 17,2 x 11,5 inches | 300dpi
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CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built for the Confederate States Navy at Birkenhead, United Kingdom, in 1862 by John Laird Sons and Company. Alabama served as a commerce raider, attacking Union merchant and naval ships over the course of her two-year career, during which she never laid anchor in a Southern port. Alabama was built in secrecy by British shipbuilders John Laird Sons and Company in Birkenhead, Merseyside in North West England in 1862. This was arranged by the Confederate agent James Dunwoody Bulloch, who was leading the procurement of sorely needed ships for the fledgling Confederate States Navy. He arranged the contract through Fraser, Trenholm Company, a cotton broker in Liverpool with ties to the Confederacy. Initially known as hull number 290, the ship was launched on 29 July 1862 as Enrica. Agent Bulloch arranged for a civilian crew and captain to sail Enrica to Terciera in the Azores. There Captain Raphael Semmes met his new ship on 20 August 1862 and oversaw the refitting of the vessel with various provisions, including armaments, and 350 tons of coal, brought there by Agrippina, his new ship's supply vessel. With a complement of a 120 man crew, composed mostly of Britons, and 24 officers, some of them Southerners, the new ship became a naval cruiser, designated a commerce raider, for the Confederate States of America. Alabama's British-made ordinance was composed of six broadside, 32-pounder, naval smoothbores and two larger and more powerful pivot cannons. Both pivot cannons were postioned roughly amidships along the deck's centerline, fore and aft of the main mast. The fore pivot was a heavy, long-range 100-pounder seven-inch (178 mm) Blakely rifle, the aft pivot a heavy, eight-inch (203 mm) smoothbore. The new Confederate cruiser was powered by both sail and a John Laird Sons and Company 300 horsepower (220 kW) steam engine, driving a single, Griffiths-type, twin-bladed brass screw. With the screw retracted using the stern's brass lif
