Dawn, 6 November 1865: The CSS Shenandoah steamed up the Mersey River through heavy morning haze with the Confederate flag flying at the peak and dropped anchor near Liverpool guard ship HMS Donegal. Customhouse officers boarded and granted entry. A lieutenant from Donegal visited, providing what Captain James Waddell recorded as “official intelligence” of termination of the war: “He was very polite toward me, and left me to believe he felt a sympathy for us in our situation.” The last Confederate banner (second national pattern) was hauled down without ceremony about 10 a.m.[1]
Waddell dispatched a communication to Her Britannic Majesty’s minister for foreign affairs announcing his arrival: “The singular position in which I find myself placed and the absence of all precedents on the subject will, I trust, induce your lordship to pardon a hasty reference to a few facts.” He had cruised as ordered against enemy commerce in locations so far removed that timely news could not be received. “I was engaged in the Arctic Ocean in acts of war as late as the 28th day of June, in ignorance of the serious reverses sustained by our arms in the field and the obliteration of the Government under whose authority I have been acting.”[2]
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