The captain of the commerce raiders CSS Sumter and CSS Alabama tells how he hunted Union merchant shipping across the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, with long passages on winds, currents and whaling grounds. Semmes writes as an unrepentant Confederate: his chapters defending secession and slavery are the special pleading of the defeated South and should be read as such.
A primary source for the naval Civil War, valuable for historians who can weigh its partisanship. Download the free EPUB.