Buckley Victor - In the shadow of the Alabama : the British Foreign Office and the American Civil War

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

2015 by Renata Eley Long

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Long, Renata Eley.

In the shadow of the Alabama : the British Foreign Office and the American Civil War / Renata Eley Long.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-61251-837-4 (epub) 1. United StatesForeign relations1861-1865. 2. Buckley, Victor, 1838-1882. 3. United StatesForeign relationsGreat Britain. 4. Great BritainForeign relationsUnited States. 5. Great Britain. Foreign OfficeHistory19th century. 6. Alabama (Screw sloop) I. Title.

E469

327.7304109034dc23

2015016201

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

For my sons, Richard and Kit,

and for Freddie and Nicole

The Foreign Office requires of the clerks... that they should take such interest in the Office as to consider its credit and reputation their own.

EDMUND HAMMOND, Permanent Under-Secretary, 1855

CONTENTS

I am indebted to several people in the U.S.A. who have waited patiently for many years while I promised this finished workin particular, Dr. Norman Delaney, historian and author to whom I wrote in 1991 having read an article by him. He not only replied, but also passed my name on to a friend, Dr. Frank J. Merli, author and professor of history at Queens College, New York. Franks first letter to me opened with the sentence: How may I help you?and thus began years of correspondence between the three of us, circulating letters with exchanges of ideas, mostly concerning Captain James D. Bulloch. In the American spirit of generosity, Norman Delaney and Frank Merli were truly the founders of the feast.

My thanks also go to Franks widow Margaret Merli, for her kindness and generosity in offering me access to his papers after his untimely passing, although, of course, they deserved the attention of academics, of which I cannot claim to be one. Dr. David M. Fahey edited Franks papers for publication.

Many people have assisted me in my research during the years it has taken to produce this book and I have valued their patience and helpfulness. If I have inadvertently missed anyones name, I hope they will forgive me.

In Great Britain, I am grateful for the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for the use of material from the Royal Archives. My thanks also to the great grandsons of Victor BuckleyEd Buckley for his permission to use the photograph of his ancestor, and Canon Walter King, for the copy of his thesis and the information he has provided; also the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Radnor for his observations in the early days of my work.

My thanks also to Kate Crowe and Helen Glass at the FCO for their considerable help; Joan Butcher, granddaughter of Captain Mathew Butcher for kindly sharing his memoir; Felicia Taylerson and Cynthia Chamberlain for kindly permitting me to quote from the books of their late husbands; the late Major David Batt of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers; also Colonel W. J. Chesshyre and Honorary Archivist Derek Stimpson; Alan Ray-Jones; Brian D. Hope; Mrs. P. Hatfield, Eton College Library; Eileen Edwards at the Merseyside Maritime Museum; Liverpool historian Jerry Williams for unreservedly sharing his knowledge of the American Civil War with me twenty years ago and loaning me his books as I got started; Jaqueline Cox, Malcolm Underwood, St. Johns College, Cambridge; John Owston, Librarian, Oxford and Cambridge University Club; Valerie Hart, the Guildhall Library; Prof. P. N. Davies who kindly provided information on Frederick Bond; also James E. Cowden, for help and expertise on the African Steam Ship Company; the late Marianne Laird (granddaughter of John Laird) for her letters and information on the Laird family; Philip Somervail; Rory Laird; Ted Molyneux, National Rifle Association; Jenny Mountain, archivist at The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc; Prof. Richard Crockatt, University of East Anglia who provided an academic reference for me to access material in the library of Cambridge University, and Prof. Thomas Otte; Jack Davis, Librarian, and staff, at the Mitchell Library, History and Glasgow Room, Glasgow City Council; Glasgow University Archive Services; Andrew Bethune, Edinburgh Central Library; The Secretary of the Reform Club; Ernie Ruffler (Cammell Laird Archives); Wiltshire County Council Archives; Wirral Museum at Birkenhead Town Hall; Graham Miller of Fawcett Christie Hydraulics Ltd. (for trusting me with his rare copy of the bicentenary book A History of Fawcett Preston & Co. Ltd.); Sarah Walpole, Archivist, Royal Anthropological Institute, London; Tunbridge Wells Family History Society; Norfolk Family History Society; Bob Newman of the Joshua Nunn Lodge, Essex, for the gift of a book and the photo of Joshua Nunn. I am also grateful to my two sons for their patience over the years as they grew up with this book in the making, and for the memories that my husband and I shared of the detours we took from our work so that we could visit places and archives of interest. My thanks to son Kit for his help with formatting the manuscript.

In the United States: Ethel Trenholm Seabrook Nepveux, descendant of George Alfred Trenholm who, at the outset of my research, very kindly sent me a copy of her book, George Alfred Trenholm and the Company That Went to War; the late Regina Rapier, author of The Saga of Felix Senac; also her family; Dr. David M. Fahey; Prof. Lonnie A. Burnett; Whitney Stewart, author, and A. George Scherer III, great, great grandson of Francis B. Carpenter; the archivists at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; Alicia Clarke and staff at the Henry Sheldon Sanford Archive, Sanford Museum, Florida; staff at the Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, VA; in Georgiastaff at Bulloch Hall, Roswell, the Georgia Historical Society, and the Andrew Low House in Savannah; Helen Matthews, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center; Sharon G. Whitney, Professor Emerita, political science; the librarians at the University of South Florida, Tampa; Philip Thrapp, for keeping an old copy of the Edinburgh phone directory, numerous airport runs, and words of encouragement.

My thanks are also due to Adam Kane, Adam Nettina, Claire Noble, Mindy Conner, and Marlena Montagna at the Naval Institute Press for their patience and assistance as my manuscript developed into a book.

In Australia: Jim Elliott, great grandson of Captain James D. Bulloch, who has kindly provided photographs of his ancestor; Pamela Statham Drew, biographer of Admiral Sir James Stirling; Tracy Willet, Museum Curator, the Stirling History Collection, City of Stirling, W.A.; Jane Whisker, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sidney.