1. Raphael Semmes was an officer in the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War.
24 Facts About Raphael Semmes
1. 2.
Raphael Semmes had served as an officer in the United States Navy from 1826 to 1860.
3.
Raphael Semmes acted as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army from April 5 to April 26,1865, although this appointment was never submitted to or officially confirmed by the Confederate Senate.
4.
Raphael Semmes was born in Charles County, Maryland, on Tayloe's Neck.
5.
Raphael Semmes was a cousin of future Confederate general Paul Jones Semmes and of future Union Navy Captain Alexander Alderman Semmes.
6.
Raphael Semmes graduated from Charlotte Hall Military Academy and entered the US Navy as a midshipman in 1826.
7.
Raphael Semmes first served on the Lexington, cruising the Caribbean and the Mediterranean until September 1826, when he was placed on leave for ill health.
8.
Raphael Semmes then studied law and was admitted to the bar.
9.
Raphael Semmes became extremely popular, and the nearby town of Semmes, Alabama, was named after him.
10.
Raphael Semmes maintained a home in Josephine, Alabama, on Perdido Bay.
11.
Raphael Semmes was promoted to commander in 1855 and was assigned to lighthouse duties until 1860.
12.
Raphael Semmes' crew surveyed the vessel while in neutral Gibraltar and determined that the repairs to her boilers were too extensive to be completed there.
13.
Raphael Semmes sailed on Alabama from August 1862 to June 1864.
14.
Raphael Semmes's 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.
15.
Captain Raphael Semmes took Alabama out on June 19,1864, and met the similar Kearsarge in one of the most famous naval engagements of the Civil War.
16.
Raphael Semmes was eventually rescued, along with 41 of his crewmen, by the British yacht Deerhound and three French pilot boats.
17.
From England, Raphael Semmes made his way back to America via Cuba and from there a safe shore landing on the Texas gulf coast.
18.
Historians John and David Eicher show Raphael Semmes as appointed to the grade of temporary brigadier general on April 5,1865.
19.
Historian Bruce Allardice notes that Raphael Semmes was vague about this appointment in his memoirs and considered his naval rank of rear admiral to be the equivalent of a brigadier general.
20.
Raphael Semmes insisted on his parole being written to include the brigadier general commission in anticipation of being charged with piracy by the United States government.
21.
Raphael Semmes's teaching consisted mainly of formal lectures, with very little open discussion or questions.
22.
Raphael Semmes defended his actions of warfare at sea and the political actions of the seceded southern states in his 1869 Memoirs of Service Afloat During The War Between the States.
23.
Raphael Semmes lived there until he died in 1877, from complications that followed food poisoning from eating some contaminated shrimp.
24.
When Raphael Semmes returned to the South from England, he brought a ceremonial Stainless Banner with him.