Friday, August 9, 2013

Day 140, August 9

One overly enthusiastic Confederate sea captain, James Waddell, kept fighting battles four months after the Civil War ended. 

Captain Waddell was in command of the Shenandoah  assigned to cruise the Pacific Ocean and destroy the New England whaling fleet hutning oil in the Pacific.

General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate army to General U.S. Grant at the courthouse in Appomatix, Virginia on April 13, 1865. Earlier that same month, Captain Waddell took command of the Shenandoah and sailed for the Pacific.

At the same time that General Lee and his soldiers were laying down their weapons to the Union Army, Captain Waddell's ship cornered and sank four whalers during the Caroline Islands in the Pacific.  Maneuvering through the ice floes of the North Pacific, Waddell and the Shenandoah captured 15 northern whaling ships between June 22 and June 28, 1865, more than two months after the war had officially ended.

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