Raphael Semmes ( ; September 27, 1809 – August 30, 1877) was an officer in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. Until then, he had been a serving officer in the US Navy from 1826 to 1860.
During the American Civil War, Semmes was captain of the cruiser , the most successful commerce raider in maritime history, taking 65 prizes. Late in the war, he was promoted to rear admiral and also acted briefly as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. His appointment or arrangement to act as a temporary brigadier general from April 5 to April 26, 1865, was never submitted to or officially confirmed by the Confederate Senate.
Early life and education
Semmes was born in Charles County, Maryland, on Tayloe's Neck, a cousin of future Confederate general Paul Jones Semmes and of future Union Navy Captain Alexander Alderman Semmes.
He graduated from Charlotte Hall Military Academy
and entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in 1826. Semmes first served on the Lexington, cruising the Caribbean and the Mediterranean until September 1826, when he was placed on leave for reasons of ill health. After a short convalescence he served on the U.S.S. Erie for part of 1829 and on the U.S.S. Brandywine (formerly Susquehanna) for the rest of 1829 and the first nine months of the following year. On September 29, 1830, he was posted to the U.S.S. Porpoise of the West Indies squadron, which was attempting to suppress piracy in the Caribbean. Semmes then studied law and was admitted to the bar. He was promoted to lieutenant in February 1837.
Career
During the Mexican–American War, he commanded the in the Gulf of Mexico. In December 1846 a squall hit the ship while under full sail in pursuit of a vessel off Veracruz. Somers capsized and was lost along with 37 sailors. Semmes then served as first lieutenant on the , accompanied the landing force at Veracruz, and was dispatched inland to catch up with the army proceeding to Mexico City.
Following the war, Semmes went on extended leave at Mobile, Alabama, where he practiced law and wrote Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War. He became extremely popular, and the nearby town of Semmes, Alabama was named after him. Semmes also maintained a home in Josephine, Alabama on Perdido Bay. He was promoted to the rank of commander in 1855 and was assigned to lighthouse duties until 1860. Following Alabama's secession from the Union, Semmes was offered a Confederate naval appointment by the provisional government; he resigned from the U.S. Navy the next day, February 15, 1861.
Confederate service
After appointment to the Confederate Navy as a commander and a futile assignment to purchase arms in the North, Semmes was sent to New Orleans to convert the steamer Habana into the cruiser/commerce raider . In June 1861, Semmes, in Sumter, outran the , breaching the Union blockade of New Orleans, and then launched a brilliant career as one of the greatest commerce raider captains in naval history.
Semmes' command of CSS Sumter lasted only six months, but during that time he ranged wide, raiding U.S. commercial shipping in both the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean; his actions accounted for the loss of 18 merchant vessels, while always eluding pursuit by Union warships. By January 1862, Sumter required a major overhaul. Semmes' crew surveyed the vessel while in neutral Gibraltar and determined that the repairs to her boilers were too extensive to be completed there. Semmes paid off the crew and laid up the vessel. U.S. Navy vessels maintained a vigil outside the harbor until she was disarmed and sold at auction in December 1862, eventually being renamed and converted to a blockade runner.
Semmes and several of his officers traveled to England where he was promoted to captain. He then was ordered to the Azores to take up command and oversee the coaling and outfitting with cannon of the newly built British steamer Enrica as a sloop-of-war, which thereafter became the Confederate commerce raider . Semmes sailed on Alabama from August 1862 to June 1864. His operations carried him from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and into the Pacific to the East Indies. During this cruise, Alabama captured 65 U.S. merchantmen and quickly destroyed the , off Galveston.
Alabama finally sailed back to the Atlantic and made port in Cherbourg, France, for a much-needed overhaul; she was soon blockaded by the pursuing Union steam sloop-of-war, . Captain Semmes took Alabama out on June 19, 1864, and met the similar Kearsarge in one of the most famous naval engagements of the Civil War.