Cruisers, Cotton and Confederates: Liverpool Waterfront in the Days of the Confederacy

In the shadow of a twelfth century monastery where the first Mersey ferries plied their trade, a ship took shape in Laird's Dock No. 4. Destined to become notorious around the world, the Alabama sailed out of the Mersey on a morning in July 1862, and entered into history as the talisman of the Confederate navy. Across the river, a host of shipyards worked day and night, feverishly constructing ships designed to break the Northern blockade of the Southern seaboard.Just a few short miles from bustling Liverpool, the monolithic cotton mills of the Industrial Revolution stood silent and the Lancashire cotton workers shivered in the shadow cast by a war between States they never knew and places they had never seen. The curious chimera of Confederate America and Victorian Great Britain was a surreal clash of cultures which was to have far-reaching consequences. One of the strangest episodes in the history of Liverpool, polarized loyalties, formed strange alliances and produced a flotilla of ships bound for varying fortunes and a starring role in the naval battles of the American Civil War.