Item No. 0829684

A CDV of Confederate Navy Captain Raphael Semmes. He wears civilian clothing and leans on a table covered with the Confederate national flag. On the reverse is the imprint of photographer Charles D. Fredricks of New York, Havana, and Paris. Measures about 2 1/2” x 4”.

Raphael Semmes was a U.S. Navy officer who joined the Confederacy at the outbreak of the Civil War and became its most famous commerce raider. After first commanding the CSS Sumter, he took charge of the newly built British-constructed CSS Alabama in 1862, leading it on a two-year cruise that spanned the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Under Semmes’s command, the Alabama captured or destroyed more than 60 Union merchant ships, severely disrupting Northern commerce. His cruise ended in June 1864 when the Alabama was sunk off Cherbourg, France, by the USS Kearsarge. Semmes later briefly served as a Confederate brigadier general right before the end of the war.