Confederate Navy on prowl

Charleston Harbor had role in warship, whaling history

THE LOST FLEET: A Yankee Whaler's Struggle Against the Confederate Navy and Arctic Disaster. By Marc Songini. St. Martin's Press. 432 pages. $25.95.

Over the years, a handful of books on the Confederate ships Alabama and Shenandoah have been published. Within the past two years, three chronicled the Shenandoah's exploits.

Naturally, these works have presented the hunter's point of view as the ships sailed thousands of miles across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans in search of prey.

From 1862 to 1865, the two ships captured more than 100 U.S. commercial vessels. Ships and cargo were burned regularly, resulting in a monetary loss in the millions of dollars by 1860s standards; by ours, it would be in the hundreds of millions.

Many of the ships destroyed were whalers. In "The Lost Fleet" readers learn what it was like to be the hunted and captured by the Alabama or Shenandoah. Author Marc Songini has offered a unusual perspective on this little-known chapter of Civil War history while also providing a history of whaling from the late 1850s into the 1870s, primarily from ships out of New Bedford, Mass. The author has done a good job chronicling the events that took place during this period in whaling industry and in describing a ship's operation of hunting and harvesting the world's largest animal. But what will be of most interest to Civil War historians are the 150 pages devoted to that era.

Those with books on the Confederacy's two most famous warships will find "The Lost Fleet" an excellent companion piece despite occasional errors. Charlestonians in particular may enjoy the chapters that provide an account of the two "Stone Fleets" (old whaling ships filled with stone) scuttled by the U.S. Navy in the Main and Maffit channels in a failed attempt to keep blockade runners from using Charleston Harbor.