Cool@Hoole

Happy Bastille Day! Introduction to Early Modern French Holdings

Posted on July 14, 2014 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, France, Rare Books Collection | Tagged | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

In honor of Bastille Day, this week Cool@Hoole will provide readers with a three-part overview of the Division of Special Collection’s French holdings. Today, early modern books will be covered; on Wednesday, the French Enlightenment will be explored; and, on Friday, our series will wrap up with a discussion of French Revolutionary pamphlets. 

HistorioBinding

Histrio gallicus comico-satyricus in its original binding

Early modern France, or the age of the Ancien Régime, was an absolute monarchy during the period between the Renaissance and the Revolution (1453-1789). Society was structured into three estates: the first, clergy; the second, aristocracy; the third, the remaining population. Early modern France was geographically much smaller than it is today, with the northern border areas serving as autonomous regions. Additionally, it had a smaller population due to the confluence of the Black Plague (1346-1353) and the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), which lowered population levels significantly for, prior to these events, France was the third largest nation in the world after China and India.

The most famous monarch of this period was Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” who ruled for seventy-two years. He advocated for the divine right of kings; centralized the state; built the Palace of Versailles; legalized slavery, but mandated that slaves be kept within intact families; supported the arts, including the authors Molière and Racine; and served as the most powerful monarch in Europe. All of his immediate heirs died before him, so it was his great grandson, Louis XV, who would succeed him.

1673

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière)

The Division of Special Collections at the University of Alabama holds over two hundred items from the era of the Ancien Régime. If you would like to search for these books, go to Scout and limit your search by the date range and location on the left-hand column. The date range should be 1453 to 1798 and the location should specify books from Hoole Special Collections Library. Early histories, political works, and accounts of colonialism can all be found — although it helps if you can read French!

If you are interested in literature, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673) was the most famous writer of this period. He was known for his comedy and, as he felt plays were meant to be acted, he rarely published. For this reason, inconsistent records of his ninety-five works are found today. Dom Juan (a French Don Quixote) and The School for Wives are two of his significant plays. The title page from his Histrio Gallius, Comico-Satyricus (1695) can be seen below the cut.

Continue reading →

Interview with Mary Haney, Division of Special Collections graduate assistant

Posted on July 7, 2014 by | Posted in: Geneology, Mary Haney | Leave a comment

By: Mary Haney, University of Alabama MLIS student

This post is part of an ongoing feature of all graduate students, faculty, and staff working in the Division of Special Collections at the University of Alabama. Read more about three of our previous students: Ellie Campbell, Alex Goolsby, and Haley Aaron. Or check out profiles of Kevin Ray and Tom Land. Kevin is the Archival Technician who supports reference services and Tom, prior to his retirement, managed the University Archives. 

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Mary Haney

First off, how did you get started in this field?

My first library job was working as a student page in the Special Collections at Hugh M. Morris Library at the University of Delaware.  I had recently declared a major in the University’s undergraduate program in Art Conservation and sought out my academic advisor for advice on how to gain more experience in the field.  When I mentioned my interest in book and paper conservation, my advisor immediately set me up with an interview for a page position in special collections. While the position did not offer direct experience in conservation, it afforded me the opportunity to work with and learn about the objects that drew my interests. By working closely with the knowledgeable and supportive staff, I learned more and more about rare books and collections management.  One librarian often pulled me aside to show me incunabula he found in the stacks, noting peculiar binding materials or marginalia. The archivists would talk to me about ethical issues in archives. Steadily, I began to realize that my interest in books and papers related more to how people used the materials and what they learned from them rather than their physical properties. By the end of my senior year, I strongly considered pursuing a degree in Library and Information Studies instead of continuing on to an advanced degree in Art Conservation.

Continue reading →

3D Digitization Project: testing phase (continued)

Posted on July 3, 2014 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Digitization, Projects | Tagged | Leave a comment

Last week, we told you about a test of our Digitization Manager’s relief digitization process, under development thanks to a UA Libraries’ Innovation Grant.

The project: a process to capture relief data using (1) a regular mounted digital camera setup, (2) a piece of simple secondary hardware, (3) the ubiquitous photo editing program Adobe Photoshop, and (4) some homegrown open-source software.

For the last few months, Jeremiah’s been simultaneously working on designing the hardware (and in a way that can be replicated by others), writing the software (a Ruby script), and working out the logistics of the technique. While last week’s post focused on how the captures are made, this one will focus a bit more on how and why the technique works.

Light and Dark

You might be wondering, Why do you need an extra piece of hardware? The short answer: light. The relief capture process depends on using brightness values to determine height, and the hardware Jeremiah built helps in this aspect.

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The movable mask (green) makes the mounted lights illuminate an object in just the right way, as it comes into view through the opening in the mask. The object, down below the mask, is being shot from above and illuminated at an angle:apperture-lightingWhere both lights cross and hit the object, the brightness values will be highest; where neither light hits the object, the brightness values will be lowest. Dozens of slices of the object are shot, each being illuminated in this way.

Height and Depth

When the slices are layered into a single image, called a height map, the composite brightness values can be used to create a sense of the object’s height and depth.  Here’s what the height map looks like for Mr. Hoole’s key:

hoole_key_dispOf course, this is in black and white, since it’s only using the lights and darks of the brightness channel. Color values return when a single, un-sliced shot of the object, called a texture map, is combined with the height map in Jeremiah’s software. The software transforms the data into a .x3d file so the object can be viewed in all its lovely dimensions.

The first time we processed the key, though, the dimensions weren’t so lovely:

hoole_key_no_blurLooks kind of fuzzy, no? We picked up so much detail from the surface of the key, so many light and dark tones, that it appears to have wildly variable height and depth, even from pixel to pixel.

The solution in this case was to blur the height map a bit:

hoole_key_disp_blur_b

Okay — so it was blurred what looks like a lot, but it was necessary to tame the height values. The texture map, however, wasn’t blurred, so the overall detail is still good:

hoole_key

(You might also notice the background doesn’t show up in this 3D rendering. This wasn’t because of the blur applied but because Jeremiah manually blacked out the background areas, now that he was satisfied with the way the rest turned out.)

Jeremiah’s still in the process of testing the technique and tweaking the software and hardware designs where needed. You’ll see more about this project once it’s out of the testing phase and ready for its public debut. 🙂

German Cookbooks: A Hidden Gem in the Wade Hall Collection

Posted on June 30, 2014 by | Posted in: Cookbooks, Mark Robison, Wade Hall Collection | Leave a comment

By: Mark Robison, University of Alabama Information Services Librarian

Although the demands on food are growing ever larger — one person places value on the fanciest treats, while another insists on the lowest possible calorie count –, every now and then almost everyone gets an appetite for hearty, simple home cooking, the preparation of which skimps on nothing.  In rustic cooking, one finds many delicious dishes, mostly from the pan and crock.  Not just pork, but also beef, chicken, fish and various vegetables are turned into tasty, sometimes high-calorie dishes.

Rust

Rustikale Kuche, Wade Hall TX721 .K67 1980

This excerpt, translated from the original German by yours truly, comes from the preface of Christiane Korn’s Rustikale Küche: Deftig – Kräftig – Schmackhaft (Rustic Cooking: Hearty — Strong — Savory). This 1980 cookbook contains dozens of recipes for traditional German soups, stews, casseroles, meat and potato dishes, dumplings, and vegetables.

Korn’s recipe for bacon dumplings (Speckknödel) embodies many of our stereotypes about German food and is enough to make any omnivore’s mouth water. Slice and fry half a pound of “fatty bacon” — yes, heavy on the fat. Mix the cooked bacon with bread crumbs, chopped onion, and parsley, and let soak in a mixture of milk and eggs. Once this delicious concoction has sat for a while, work in flour to form a dough. Mold this dough into four dumplings, boil them in salt water, and serve with sauerkraut.

Korn’s Rustikale Küche is one of over twenty German cookbooks in the Wade Hall Collection of the University of Alabama Libraries Division of Special Collections. These cookbooks span the time period from the 1950s to the 1990s. While many of them were published in Germany, some were authored by Americans, such as Das Germantown Kochbuch, compiled by a group of churches in the Nashville area. The titles in this collection are quite unique; in many cases, the University of Alabama is the only library in North America to own a copy. (The only comparable collection I could find at another American university was at the University of Denver Libraries Special Collections, with which UA’s collection has some overlap.)  Other notable titles in the Wade Hall German cookbooks include Die Welt der Marmelade (1978), devoted entirely to marmalade recipes, and Das Mikrowellen-Kochbuch (1984), which presents recipes for that pinnacle of 1980s kitchen innovation, the microwave.

A comprehensive list of the Wade Hall Collection’s German Cookbooks is printed below.  The items with asterisks are the only copy at an American library. These books are available at Hoole Library, in case you get the inspiration to do a little German-style cooking of your own!

Mikro

Das Mikrowellen Kochbuch Wade Hall TX832 .F76 1984

German Cookbooks in Wade Hall Books Collection:

3D Digitization Project: testing phase

Posted on June 24, 2014 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Digitization, Projects | Tagged | Leave a comment

Our Digitization Manager, Jeremiah, has been working on a pretty exciting project, and we thought we’d share some pictures from the testing phase.

Late last year, we got a grant from UA Libraries to develop a digitizing process for relief objects, including an inexpensive apparatus used to facilitate the image capture (see these posts about making the components) and a Ruby program that creates the 3D files. The project is now in the testing phase.

For my first test run last week, we chose one of the large keys that used to be in the possession of our special collection library‘s namesake, W. S. Hoole. (Thank you, Associate Dean Mary Bess Paluzzi!) They’re not only cool shapes to work with, but they also have some nice textures:

In Jeremiah’s process, dozens of shots of an object are taken and composited together. To make those captures with our usual mounted-camera digitization setup, we’ve added a secondary apparatus, one with a mask that moves back and forth over the object, targeting portions of it for capture:

Most of what I learned this go-around was how to set up the object for digitization, orienting it to the apparatus. Here it is on a platform under the apparatus (with mask removed):

Once the object is in place, it can’t be moved. Instead, everything else moves, structuring the way light is cast onto the item:

  1. The position of the apparatus changes after each pass over the object. At minimum, we shoot the object from two different orientations, usually three. (If you look at the wide shots above up close, you’ll see circular position marks on the table.)
  2. The position of the opening — or aperture — in the green mask is moved in increments during the digitization process, so that we capture multiple different views of the object through the aperture.

 

photo06

 

Why is the mask bright green? For exactly the reason you might expect — to use a green-screen process. It’s not too different from how actors are shot in front of a green background so computer-generated effects can be added in around them. In this case, the green signals to the Ruby software which portions of the image should be cut out — namely, the parts that aren’t the slice of the object.

After all the capture is done, the images are combined into a whole. It looks like this, before we map a color shot onto it:

hoole_key_disp

In a subsequent post, we’ll talk how the compositing technique works. It has a lot to do with lighting. In the meantime, this is a screenshot of the final product of the key test:

hoole_key

Between the pages

Posted on June 23, 2014 by | Posted in: Amy Hildreth Chen, Southern Literature, Wade Hall Collection | Leave a comment

By: Amy Chen, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow

In September 2014, Wade Hall’s Library, an exhibition of Wade Hall’s extensive collection of books — a large portion are dedicated to Southern Literature — will be mounted in the Pearce Lobby of the Amelia Gayle Gorgas Library. Occasionally, we will be promoting this exhibition by showcasing a few of the items that will be on display. Today, we examine one of the most interesting aspects of book collecting, which is occasionally finding the items tucked into books by their previous owners.

WomenoftheSouth

Lock of hair found in Women of the South (1860) Wade Hall PS508.W7 F7 1860

Mary Forrest. Women of the South Distinguished in Literature. Illustrated with Portraits on Steel. New York, NY: Charles B. Richardson, 1866. Second Edition.

This anthology of Southern women’s writing is remarkable for both its year of publication and its interest area: Women of the South Distinguished in Literature is not only the first anthology dedicated to Southern writing, but also the first to document women’s writing.[1] Significant authors collected in this anthology include Caroline Lee Hentz, Sally Rochester Ford, and Augusta Jane Evans Wilson. Wilson became particularly famous as Alabama’s first professional author; she was later inducted Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame. Also worth noting are the four women who are grouped together as “writers not yet authors”: Jane T. Worthington, R. Jacobus, Bessie B. Cheesborough, and Emelie C.S. Chilton. These “writers” are represented by only one or two pieces, whereas the volume’s “authors” have between four and fourteen pieces included. Helpfully, each entrant in the anthology also is given a brief biographical sketch.

Women of the South Distinguished in Literature was first published prior to the Civil War; this second edition features two ownership signatures inside the front cover and two written in the back. All four are written in pencil by Miss Josie MacDonald, who became Mrs. John Hart. MacDonald clearly treasured the volume: she tucked her calling card into the book and wrote her address on the book, which allows contemporary researchers to learn that she lived in an elegant row house on 1936 Jefferson St. Louisville, Kentucky, which was built in 1900 and is still standing.

Also of interest are a number of items Mrs. John Hart slipped into the pages of the volume. The first item that can be seen is a form from postmaster John Barrett addressed to the occupant of 1936. The postmaster requests the names of all residents of the home and notes that women should have their first name represented, not just the name of their husband. An article, likely from the local Louisville, Kentucky newspaper titled “Augusta Evans Wilson: A Venerated Novelist” can also be located. The article does not have a date or author indicated, but it discusses “the truth about the origin of the name ‘St. Elmo,’” which is the title of one of Evans’s books.

Additionally, a brown ringlet of hair can be found within the selection of Carrie Bell Sinclair’s poetry. While hair seems to be an odd item to come across in a book, those from the turn of the century treasured it; hair was often made into jewelry or wreaths, kept to make into hairpieces, or exchanged by friends and lovers as a memento. The hair as well as all the other items in the book is in good condition. However, the book itself is only in fair condition, as the front cover has become detached from the spine.

[1] Susan H. Irons, “Anthologies of Southern Literature,” The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Edited by Joseph M. Flora, Lucinda Hardwick MacKethan, and Todd W. Taylor (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 35.

CSS Alabama, Part III

Posted on June 20, 2014 by | Posted in: CSS Alabama, Kevin Ray, Photograph Collections | Leave a comment

By: Kevin Ray, Archival Technician

This post is the third of three posts in a week-long series describing the history of the CSS Alabama and the resources available in the Division of Special Collections on both this ship and the naval history of the Confederacy. June 19, 2014 is the 150th anniversary of the battle between the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsarge, which resulted in the sinking of the Alabama. If you’d like, review the first and second posts of this series. 

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CSS Alabama muster log, the Edward Maffitt Anderson photograph album, and the bottom of the model of the CSS Alabama

The W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library contains a number of primary and published materials about CSS Alabama. 

Among the manuscripts holdings are partial log books for CSS Alabama and CSS Tuscaloosa. These were kept by Lt. John Low, who Semmes placed in command of Tuscaloosa after its capture and re-christening. A photo album that belonged to Midshipman Edward Maffit Anderson contains pictures of many of the officers and crew of Alabama. A partial muster roll of Alabama mentions some of those who died during the battle with Kearsarge.

The University Archives section of Hoole Library holds a set of plans of the ship, which were copied from the originals. Numerous published works are available on CSS Alabama, its captain, and crew. These include published firsthand accounts such as The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter by Raphael Semmes, and The logs of the C.S.S. Alabama and C.S.S. Tuscaloosa, 1862-1863,by John Low, edited by William Stanley Hoole.

Additionally, there are published works by scholars, including William Stanley Hoole and Charles Grayson Summersell. Published works relating to the Alabama Claims are also available.

Finally, the CSS Alabama Digital Collection can be viewed online. This exhibition contains images, documents, and a clickable map of Alabama’s journey and it was created in 1996 by P. Toby Graham, who at that time was a doctoral candidate in The University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies. Graham was just named the University Librarian of UGA and the Associate Provost of UGA Libraries.

The story of CSS Alabama is more than the story of a single Confederate warship. She was the scourge of United States merchant shipping during the Civil War. And, in postwar peace, she was a contributing factor in the development of international law.

Interest in Alabama continues to this day. Her wreck was discovered in 1984.  The wreck has been explored by scientists as a part of a cooperative effort between France and the United States. In a sense, the legacy of international cooperation established by the Alabama Claims continues today in the exploration of the wreck of CSS Alabama.

The Hoole Library is proud to have its own collection of items related to the cruise of CSS Alabama, and we welcome the opportunity to share them with scholars and the public.

CSS Alabama Bibliography

Bowcock, Andrew. CSS Alabama: Anatomy of a Confederate Raider. London: Chatham, 2002.

C.S.S. Alabama partial muster roll. University Libraries, Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama. http://purl.lib.ua.edu/88281

C.S.S. Tuscaloosa Logs. University Libraries, Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama. http://purl.lib.ua.edu/19027

Edwin Maffitt Anderson photographs. University Libraries, Division of Special Collections, The University of Alabama. http://purl.lib.ua.edu/112974

Hoole, William Stanley. Four Years in the Confederate Navy: The Career of Captain John Low on the C.S.S. Fingal, Florida, Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and Ajax. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1964.

Low, John. The Logs of the C.S.S. Alabama and C.S.S. Tuscaloosa, 1862-1863, Edited with an Introduction by W. Stanley Hoole. University, AL: Confederate Publishing Company, 1972.

Semmes, Raphael. The Cruise of the Alabama and The Sumter: From the Private Journals and Other Papers of Commander R. Semmes, C.S.N, and Other Officers. New York: Carleton, 1864.

Summersell, Charles Grayson. CSS Alabama: Builder, Captain, and Plans. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1985.

The University of Alabama Libraries. “C.S.S. Alabama Digital Collection.” Accessed June 13, 2014. http://www.lib.ua.edu/content/libraries/hoole/digital/cssala/main.htm.

CSS Alabama, Part II

Posted on June 18, 2014 by | Posted in: CSS Alabama, Kevin Ray, Photograph Collections | Leave a comment

By: Kevin Ray, Archival Technician

This post is the second of three posts in a week-long series describing the history of the CSS Alabama and the resources available in the Division of Special Collections on both this ship and the naval history of the Confederacy. June 19, 2014 is the 150th anniversary of the battle between the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsarge, which resulted in the sinking of the Alabama. Read the first post in the series. 

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CSS Alabama, photograph from the Edward Maffitt Anderson photograph album

 

Alabama left Cape Town and sailed on to Cherbourg, France, where she docked on June 11, 1864.  The ship was in serious need of repairs and supplies and the men were in need of rest.  Time, however, was running short for Alabama and her crew.  On June 14, USS Kearsarge, commanded by Captain John Winslow, arrived off Cherbourg.  Semmes weighed his options and decided to take his chances in battle.

Alabama and Kearsarge met in battle on Sunday, June 19, 1864.  They fired at one another several miles off Cherbourg, while a crowd of witnesses watched the battle unfold from any vantage point available.  Englishman John Lancaster and his family watched the battle aboard their yacht, Deerhound.  This private vessel would play a key role in the battle.  Alabama fired first, apparently missing.  Over the course of the battle Alabama fired more rounds, but either missed, or hit to little or no effect.   Alabama’s ammunition was old and faulty and the crew had taken little gunnery practice while at sea in an effort to conserve the ammunition that they had.  The crew of Kearsarge fired more slowly, more carefully, and more accurately.  The damage to Alabama mounted.  Realizing his ship was sinking, Captain Semmes sent up a white flag of surrender and gave orders to abandon ship.  Survivors plunged into the English Channel.  Some were picked up by French boats, others by Kearsarge.  However, about 40 officers and crew were rescued by the yacht Deerhound and taken to Southampton, England, thereby avoiding capture by Captain Winslow.  Among those saved by Deerhound were Captain Semmes and his first officer, Lieutenant John McIntosh Kell.  In all, some 40 crewmen aboard Alabama perished in the battle, while only 1 crewman was killed aboard Kearsarge.

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Captain Semmes, taken from the photograph album of Edward Maffitt Anderson

As the battle ended, CSS Alabama sank to a depth of nearly 32 fathoms.  Within a year, the Civil War itself ended.  Then a new battle ensued. This battle was waged not on the high seas, but in courts of law.  The United States government brought claims against Great Britain for losses caused by CSS Alabama and other Confederate commerce raiders which had been built in England.  The United States claimed that ships had been built in violation of Britain’s official policy of neutrality, and that the British were responsible for damages caused by the vessels.  The claims were settled by an early means of international arbitration.  Britain agreed to pay a settlement of over $15 million.  Afterwards, the United States and Great Britain became steadfast allies.

Searching Acumen – Limiting by Field

Posted on June 16, 2014 by kgmatheny | Posted in: Acumen, Delivery Methodology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Acumen’s simple one-box search is pretty robust, searching multiple fields by default, but what if you need to pinpoint a specific field in the record? In the second in our series of posts on searching our digital repository, Acumen, we discuss searching by field — how to enter that kind of search into the box and why you’d even want to.

How do I do it?

The format for fielded searching in Acumen is actually fairly simple. Enter it in the search box like this:

field:keyword

Here are some examples:

title:fountain
abstract:sermon
description:classroom
date:1917
subject:abolition
genre:reciept
creator:shakespeare

You can use any of the fields shown above to do a limited search.

If you want to include more than one keyword, format your search like this:

field:(keyword AND keyword)
genre:(christmas AND cards)
date:(june AND 1863)

If you want to use more than one field in one search, format it like this:

field:keyword AND field:keyword
title:cantata AND creator:handel
subject:boxing AND description:match

Why would I do it?

Putting a single word in the box and searching isn’t a bad plan, but like with limiting by format, limiting by field can help narrow down a large set of results.

For example, the keyword legal can come up in a variety of places in a record. A simple search for that keyword yields 6417 results, but things look pretty different when you do a fielded search. You’ll see the number of results below the search box area, on the left:

keyword-legal

 

In another example, the keyword time brings up 1185 results. Here’s what it looks like in different fields:

keyword-time

 

In general, using multiple keywords can get you more focused results, especially if you put AND between them. (The default is to look for one word OR the other.) Using multiple keywords in a limited search is even better, either within one field or between different fields.

football game = 679 results
football AND game = 183 results
title:(football AND game) = 104 results

This is especially true when you’re dealing with very common words and phrases.

photograph 1908 = 28798 results
photograph AND 1908 = 155 items
genre:photograph AND date:1908 = 71 results

The key to searching in a library catalogue or database is the old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Specifically, try different things. One strategy is to use different words and phrases for the same concept, but you should also consider limiting your search to a particular field. In Acumen, it’s simple: just enter field:term.

 

 

CSS Alabama, Part I

Posted on June 16, 2014 by | Posted in: Alabama Collection, CSS Alabama, Kevin Ray | Leave a comment

By: Kevin Ray, Archival Technician

This post is the first of three posts in a week-long series describing the history of the CSS Alabama and the resources available in the Division of Special Collections on both this ship and the naval history of the Confederacy. June 19, 2014 is the 150th anniversary of the battle between the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsarge, which resulted in the sinking of the Alabama. 

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CSS Alabama, photograph from the Edwward Maffitt Anderson photograph album

Today she rests at a depth of 190 feet off the coast of Cherbourg, France.  She sank in battle 150 years ago, on June 19, 1864, after a two year cruise that resulted in the capture and sinking of 65 U.S. merchant ships and 1 U.S. Navy ship.  Built in England, she sailed under the Confederate flag and spent almost her entire two years of service at sea, never dropping anchor in a Southern port.  She influenced the both the American Civil War and international law.  Known to the world as CSS Alabama, she was the most successful commerce raider of the Civil War.

CSS Alabama was built in secrecy in Birkenhead, England in 1862, by John Laird and Sons and was first known simply as ship 290.  James D. Bulloch, the Confederate foreign agent in Britain, oversaw the construction. Thomas H. Dudley, the U.S. Consul in Liverpool, pressed the British government to impound 290, insisting that she was being built for the Confederate Navy in violation of Britain’s position of neutrality.  The two men were in a race to see whether Bulloch could build faster than Dudley could gather information.  In a tight contest, Bulloch won.  Ship 290, now christened Enrica, sailed out of Birkenhead on the evening of July 29, 1863.  She made her way to the Azores to take on supplies and armament.  While there, she was boarded by her new captain, Raphael Semmes.  On August 25, the Confederate flag was raised and Enrica was re-named CSS Alabama.

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Ralph Semmes, captain of the CSS Alabama, image taken from Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War Between the States (1869) Alabama Collection E599.A3 S64

Departing the Azores on August 26, Alabama claimed her first prize on September 6.  She raided commerce vessels in the Eastern Atlantic, along the East Coast of the United States, and in the Gulf of Mexico.  There, in January, 1863, Alabama sank the Union warship USS Hatteras near Galveston, Texas.  From the Gulf of Mexico, Alabama steamed to the South Atlantic where she claimed a total of 29 ships captured or burned.  One prize, the bark Conrad, was captured on June 20, 1863, and re-commissioned by Captain Semmes as CSS Tuscaloosa.  Semmes ordered Lieutenant John Low to take command of the new Confederate ship.  The two commerce raiders then headed to the South African coast.  Tuscaloosa was later seized in South Africa for violating British neutrality.

In September, 1863, Alabama traveled into the Indian Ocean.  She went as far as the Indonesian Islands before returning west.  This raid into Southeast Asian waters nearly resulted in battle with the USS Wyoming, which was on a mission to destroy the allusive Confederate raider.  The two ships never met, and Semmes returned to Cape Town, South Africa.

Come back on Wednesday, June 18 to read the next part of the story!