Commander of the famous Confederate raider, the C.S.S. Alabama

Very Rare Mexican War era signature with sentiment, rank and date

(1809-1877) Born in Charles County, Maryland, on Tayloe's Neck, he was a cousin of future Confederate general Paul J. Semmes. He graduated from Charlotte Hall Military Academy, and entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in 1826. During his early U.S. Naval service he cruised on various ships on duty in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the West Indies attempting to suppress piracy. During the Mexican War, he commanded the U.S.S. Somers in the Gulf of Mexico. In December 1846, a squall hit the ship while under full sail in pursuit of a vessel off Veracruz, and the Somers capsized and was lost along with 37 sailors. Semmes then served as lieutenant on the U.S.S. Raritan, accompanying the landing force at Veracruz, and he was dispatched inland to serve with the army proceeding to Mexico City. He was promoted to the rank of commander in 1855, and was assigned to lighthouse duties until 1860. Following the secession of Alabama from the Union, Semmes was offered a naval appointment by the provisional Confederate government, and he resigned his U.S. Naval commission the next day, February 15, 1861. After his appointment to the Confederate Navy as a commander, he was sent to New Orleans to convert the steamer Habana into the commerce raider, the C.S.S. Sumter. In June 1861, Commander Semmes, with the Sumter, outran the U.S.S. Brooklyn, breaching the Union blockade at New Orleans, thus launching his brilliant career as one of the greatest commerce raider captains in naval history. Semmes's command of the Sumter lasted only six months, but during that time he ranged wide, raiding U.S. commercial shipping in both the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, his actions accounting for the loss of 18 merchant vessels, while always eluding pursuit by Union warships. By January 1862, the Sumter required a major overhaul. Semmes's crew surveyed the vessel while in neutral Gibraltar and determined that the repairs to her boilers were too extensive to be completed there. He was promoted to captain, and with several of his officers he traveled to England where he was ordered to the Azores to take up command, and oversee the coaling and outfitting with cannon of the newly built British steamer Enrica as a sloop-of-war, which thereafter became the famous Confederate commerce raider, the C.S.S. Alabama. Captain Semmes sailed on the Alabama from August 1862, to June 1864. His operations carried him from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and into the Pacific to the East Indies. During this time the Alabama captured 65 U.S. merchantmen, and destroyed the U.S.S. Hatteras, off Galveston, Texas. The Alabama sailed back to the Atlantic and made port in Cherbourg, France, for a much-needed overhaul, and she was soon blockaded by the pursuing Union sloop-of-war, the U.S.S. Kearsarge. Captain Semmes took the Alabama out of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864, and met the Kearsarge in one of the most famous naval engagements of the Civil War. After receiving a fatal shell to the starboard waterline, which tore open a portion of Alabama's hull, causing her steam engine to explode from the shell's impact, Captain Semmes was forced to order the striking of his ship's Confederate battle flag, and display a hand-held white flag of surrender to finally halt the engagement. As the Alabama was going down by the stern, the Kearsarge stood off at a distance, and observed at the orders of her Captain John A. Winslow who sent rescue boats for the survivors. As his ship sank, the wounded Semmes threw his sword into the sea, depriving the Kearsarge's Captain Winslow of the traditional surrender ceremony of having it handed over to him as victor. He was rescued, along with forty-one of his crewmen, by the British yacht Deerhound and three French pilot boats. He and his forty-one men were taken to England where all but one recovered, while there they were hailed as naval heroes, despite the loss of the Alabama. From England, Semmes made his way back to America via Cuba and from there he made a safe shore landing on the Texas gulf coast. It took his small party several weeks of journeying through the war-devastated South before he was finally able to make his way to the Confederate capital at Richmond. He was promoted to rear admiral in February 1865, and during the last months of the war he commanded the James River Squadron from his flagship, the heavily armored ironclad C.S.S. Virginia II. With the fall of Richmond, in April 1865, Admiral Semmes supervised the destruction of all the squadron's nearby warships, and thereafter acted as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army, the implication being that he was appointed to that grade in an informal arrangement. After the destruction of the naval squadron, his sailors were turned into an infantry unit and dubbed the "Naval Brigade, with Semmes placed in command. His intention for the brigade was to join General Robert E. Lee's army in the field, but Lee's army was already cut off from Richmond, so most of Semmes's men boarded a train and escaped to join General Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina. Semmes and the Naval Brigade surrendered to General William T. Sherman with Johnston's army at Bennett Place, near Durham Station, North Carolina. He was subsequently paroled on May 1, 1865. Semmes's parole notes that he held commissions as both a brigadier general, and rear admiral in the Confederate States service when he surrendered with General Johnston's army. He insisted on his parole being written to include the brigadier general commission in anticipation of being charged with piracy by the United States government. The U.S. held Semmes as a prisoner after the war, but released him on parole, then later arrested him for treason on December 15, 1865. After a good deal of behind-the-scenes political machinations, all charges were eventually dropped, and he was finally released on April 7, 1866. After his release, Semmes worked as a professor of philosophy and literature at Louisiana State Seminary, now Louisiana State University, as a county judge, and then as a newspaper editor. He later returned to Mobile, and practiced law. Semmes is credited with helping to popularize the phrase "War Between the States" to refer to the American Civil War. In 1871, the citizens of Mobile, Alabama presented him with what became known as the "Raphael Semmes House," and it remained his residence until his untimely death in 1877 from complications that were caused by food poisoning from eating contaminated shrimp. Raphael Semmes was interred in Mobile's Old Catholic Cemetery. Semmes was 67 years old when he died. He was the author of "Service Afloat and Ashore During the Mexican War."


Mexican War Era Signature With Sentiment, Rank & Date: 3 x 1 3/4, mounted to 5 x 3 period card. Boldly signed by Semmes in ink as follows: Yrs. truly, R. Semmes, Lieut., U.S.N., April 25th, 1845. ID written on the card, Rafael Semmes (1809-1877) Noted Confederate naval officer. Light age toning and some minor foxing. Very rare to find a Semmes autograph from this period of his naval career. Many of the card signatures that you find are post Civil War period. Very desirable autograph in this early format as a Lieutenant in the United States Navy.


WBTS Trivia: In 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed from Mexico, and it was admitted as the 28th state in the U.S., on December 29, 1845. Not long afterwards hostilities erupted between the two countries and the Mexican-American War commenced ending in 1848.