Background
James Iredell Waddell was born at Pittsboro, Chatham County, North Carolina, the son of Francis Nash and Elizabeth Davis (Moore) Waddell, and the great-grandson of Hugh Waddell. He was reared by his paternal grandparents.
James Iredell Waddell was born at Pittsboro, Chatham County, North Carolina, the son of Francis Nash and Elizabeth Davis (Moore) Waddell, and the great-grandson of Hugh Waddell. He was reared by his paternal grandparents.
He became a midshipman of the United States Navy on September 10, 1841. On May 27, 1842, he was seriously wounded in a duel with Midshipman Archibald H. Waring. The episode gave him a limp for life and cost him eleven months of active duty. Until the outbreak of the Civil War his most vigorous service afloat was his Mexican War tour of duty from Feburary 21 to October 6, 1846, aboard the Somers, active off Vera Cruz. Promotion to the rank of passed midshipman became effective on August 10, 1847, in the middle of a two-year assignment for instruction at the naval school at Annapolis, later the Naval Academy. His promotion to the rank of lieutenant on September 15, 1855, came in the course of a three-year cruise to Brazil aboard the Germantown. A short voyage in 1857 to Central America aboard the storeship Release brought him some favorable mention for courage in connection with an epidemic of yellow fever that appeared just after leaving Aspinwall. Afterward, until July 11, 1859, he taught navigation in the Naval Academy. During this period one of his students described him as a handsome, well proportioned man, slightly over six feet tall and weighing about two hundred pounds - a "splendid specimen of manhood" of "noble bearing gracious courtly radiant with kindness". When he returned from duty in the Orient in 1862 he resigned, and his name was stricken from the rolls January 18. Secretly entering the Confederacy by way of Baltimore, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Confederate States Navy on March 27, 1862. He saw Farragut's fleet capture New Orleans. Hardly a month later he served with the Drewry's Bluff batteries in the repulse of the James River flotilla supporting McClellan's Peninsular campaign. Similar battery duty at Charleston, until March 1863, ended his services within the Confederacy.
He went to Paris for duty aboard some vessel acquired by James D. Bulloch. On October 19, 1864, near Funchal, Madeira, he took command of the new fast Indiaman, Sea King, and transformed her into the Confederate Shenandoah. Under orders to concentrate upon the untouched New England whaling fleets in the Pacific, he reached Melbourne on January 25, 1865. Several prizes were burned and bonded on this initial leg of the cruise. A defective propeller shaft and bearing demanded that the Shenandoah be dry-docked. After a general overhauling of the ship and some brief legal difficulties over alleged recruiting among neutrals the ship left Melbourne on Feburary 18. In extricating himself from these charges, Waddell made good use of the international law he had read while teaching at Annapolis. Though Confederate officers claimed then, and with apparent sincerity long afterward, that the charges were groundless, forty-two welcome "stowaways" appeared on deck just out from Melbourne. More surprising to this generation is that Waddell, always short-handed, procured American recruits from the crews of nearly all his prizes - even from those that carried newspapers telling of Lee's surrender at Appomattox. His course from Melbourne is best traced by his prizes. Four whalers at Ascension Island were captured on April 1; the Sea of Okhotsk yielded one in May - over a month after Appomattox. The Bering Sea in a week, June 21-28, afforded twenty-four or twenty-five. Three were used as cartels; the remainder burned. A newspaper aboard one of the first Bering Sea prizes told of Lee's defeat, but it also carried Davis' Danville Proclamation declaring that the war would be continued with renewed vigor. Seamen from the prizes continued to enlist in the Confederate navy; and Waddell continued his search. No additional sails were sighted until August 2, when the Shenandoah fell in with the British merchantman Barracouta, roughly a thousand miles west of Acapulco, Mexico, and thirteen days from San Francisco. She reported the complete collapse of the Confederacy. In such circumstances the Shenandoah had no standing in maritime law to protect her against Seward's claim that such Confederate ships were pirates. The dangers of landing in the nearest port of the United States were obvious. Waddell disregarded all advice to beach his ship and let each man shift for himself or seek the nearest British colonial port. With fine courage and magnificent seamanship he laid a course for England by the way of Cape Horn. On November 6, flying the only Confederate flag that ever went around the world, the Shenandoah stood in to Liverpool - some 17, 000 miles without speaking a ship. The "piratical" officers remained in England until after amnesty was offered. In 1875 Waddell became a captain for the Pacific Mail Company. Two years later he wrecked the San Francisco on an uncharted reef, but no passengers were lost. He died in Annapolis while commanding the Maryland state flotilla for policing the oyster beds.
During the American Civil War, Waddell took command of the CSS Shenandoah, which he used to sail around the globe and launch raids against the U. S. Navy. It was not until August 1865 that he learned the war had ended. He eventually surrendered his vessel to British authorities in Liverpool on November 6, marking the last official surrender of the Civil War.
(From the rear cover of this 200 page book: "The last arme...)
At the end of the Mexican War he was married to Ann S. Iglehart, of Annapolis, Maryland, in 1848. He was childless.