James Iredell Waddell

• 1. Introduction

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  James Iredell Waddell fired the last shots of the American Civil War from the deck of a Confederate warship in Arctic waters, months after the fighting had stopped on land. He was born in Pittsboro, North Carolina on the 3rd of July 1824, and he would live a life bookended by two navies and shaped by a war he refused to abandon. The questions that follow from his story are strange ones: How does a man keep fighting a war that has already ended? And what does surrender look like when you are sailing alone on the other side of the globe?

• 2. Two Decades of Service

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  Waddell joined the United States Navy as a midshipman in September 1841, beginning nearly two decades of wide-ranging service. He sailed in USS Pennsylvania and took part in Mexican-American War operations off Veracruz aboard USS Somers. Later tours took him to South America in USS Germantown, to the eastern Pacific in USS Saginaw, and across to the East Indies Squadron in USS John Adams. Along the way he also served as an instructor at the United States Naval Academy, bringing a breadth of experience that few officers could match. It was while returning home aboard USS John Adams in late 1861, with the Civil War breaking out around him, that he resigned his commission. The U.S. Navy dismissed him formally in January 1862.

• 3. The Birth of the Shenandoah

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  In March 1862, Waddell was appointed a Lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy and sent to New Orleans. His first assignment was aboard the incomplete ironclad CSS Mississippi, which was destroyed in late April before she could fight. The following month he served as an artillery officer at Drewry's Bluff, Virginia, where Confederate shore batteries traded fire with Federal ironclads. Shore-battery duty at Charleston, South Carolina filled the rest of 1862 and stretched into 1863. Then, in March 1863, he was sent abroad to England to wait for a seagoing posting. That wait ended in October 1864, in the middle of the central Atlantic, where a British steam-and-sail vessel called the Sea King was converted on the open water into the Confederate cruiser CSS Shenandoah. Waddell took command as her commanding officer, and the long cruise began.

• 4. Hunting the Whaling Fleet

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  Commander Waddell drove the Shenandoah through the south Atlantic, across the Indian Ocean, and up into the north Pacific. In Arctic waters during June 1865, he devastated the United States-flagged whaling fleet. On the 27th of June 1865, he captured a prize vessel called the Susan and Abigail, whose captain handed over a San Francisco newspaper. The paper reported that the Confederate Government had fled Richmond, Virginia ten weeks earlier. But it also carried a proclamation from Confederate President Jefferson Davis declaring that the war would be carried on with renewed vigor. Waddell used that proclamation as his warrant to keep fighting. Within the space of seven hours, just below the Arctic Circle, he captured ten more whalers.

• 5. The Moment He Stopped

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  On the 3rd of August 1865, the Shenandoah met a Liverpool barque named Barracouta in the open sea, bound for San Francisco. From her, Waddell received a clear picture of what he had not wanted to accept: General Joseph E. Johnston had surrendered his army on the 26th of April, Kirby Smith's army had surrendered on the 26th of May, and President Davis himself had been captured along with part of his cabinet. There was no more Confederate authority left to issue new orders. Waddell lowered the Confederate flag and ordered the ship altered to look like a merchant vessel. The guns came down from the deck and were stored below. Her hull was painted over to shed any appearance of a warship. A man who had spent months at sea fighting a finished war now had to find his way to a port that would not arrest him on arrival.

• 6. The Last Surrender

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  Waddell chose Liverpool. On the 6th of November 1865, he surrendered the CSS Shenandoah to Captain Paynter in mid-river on the River Mersey. The Confederate flag was lowered before the crew and a Royal Navy detachment that had boarded the vessel, marking the last official surrender of the American Civil War. The final act was not dramatic in any military sense. Waddell walked up the steps of Liverpool Town Hall and presented a letter to the Mayor of Liverpool, formally surrendering the ship to the British government. He had circled the globe in a vessel converted on the open Atlantic, captured dozens of ships, and carried a war past its ending. The gun decks were empty, and the flag was gone.

• 7. Life After the War

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  Waddell did not set foot in the United States again until 1870. When he did return, he took the position of captain of the commercial steamer City of San Francisco, a far quieter assignment than commanding a Confederate raider. Later he took charge of Maryland's oyster regulation force, an office that put him at the head of a very different kind of fleet. He died at Annapolis, Maryland on the 15th of March 1886 and was buried at St. Anne's Cemetery in Annapolis. Decades after his death, the Charles F. Adams-class guided missile destroyer USS Waddell (DDG-24) was named in his honor.