Andrew Sillen announces the contradiction in this volume from the start, declaring that it would be nearly impossible to write a biography of David Henry White because White was a free Black man, living in Delaware before the Civil War, that White was illiterate, and to Sillen’s everlasting irritation, it is literate famous people who wrote history.
In this case, the writer is Raphael Semmes, captain of the Confederate raider “Alabama.” Semmes, a devoted Confederate and true believer in slavery, is now, like many, in disrepute. Although his name still appears abundantly in Mobile, Alabama, on June 5, 2020, his statue was ‘”unceremoniously removed from a downtown street.”
A highly literate man and a forceful memoirist, Semmes wrote up his adventures at sea before and during the Civil War. Semmes had served in the Second Seminole War. In the war with Mexico, he commanded the “USS Somers.” It didn’t go too well; the ship was lost in a storm, but Semmes wrote up his adventures in “Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War,” 1851. Semmes would, after the Civil War ended, write up his adventures aboard the “Sumter” and the “Alabama” in another volume of “Service Afloat.”
Sillen declares here that he is NOT writing another biography of Semmes. He tries but even against his will this is mostly the story of Semmes and of the “UCS Alabama”—and a lively story it is. Known at the time as one of the most graceful, beautiful ships ever built, she had both steam power and sails, was faster than any other ship, and heavily armed.
Built illegally and surreptitiously in England, the “Alabama” under Semmes’ command sailed the Atlantic, even around Africa to Singapore, capturing and burning dozens of Union merchant vessels, including New England whalers. Flaming like a modern tanker, that must have been a spectacular sight. The “Alabama” took aboard the passengers and crews of destroyed vessels and set them ashore, when convenient. This went on for three years, and the crew, ruffians to begin with, became increasingly surly.
In time we learn what there is to know about David Henry White. He had been a cook on the packet ship “Tonawanda,” captured by the “Alabama” in 1862. He was taken aboard the “Alabama” and forced to work for some 600 days as a cook and general cabin boy, before he drowned when the ship was sunk in battle off Cherbourg, France in June, 1864.
Sillen is properly outraged that Semmes, in his memoir, lies about White, declares him to have been enslaved in Delaware, and asserts that White really enjoyed his service on the “Alabama” and loved his masters. This infuriating falsehood, common enough in plantation literature ashore, became part of the powerful and effective “Lost Cause” narrative, promoted by the UDC and countless romantic renderings of the Old South, right up through “Gone With the Wind.”
