The _Alabama_ was a perfect cruiser for her day--long, lean, and shoal of draft. She was 230 feet long, only thirty-two wide, and she drew but fifteen feet of water. She had the rig of a barkentine, with long lower masts to give her plenty of fore and aft sail so that she could lie closer to the wind than any ordinary square-rigged ship. She had also a steam power able to drive her ten knots an hour, and her screw propeller could be detached and hoisted out of water whenever it was desirable to work with sails only. She carried eight guns, of which one was a hundred-pounder Blakely rifle, mounted on a pivot forward; one an eight-inch smooth-bore on a pivot aft, and six were thirty-twos in broadside. Semmes, for his activity in the _Sumter_, was ordered to the new cruiser. He gathered his officers and crew at Liverpool, and shipping the outfit of all kinds in the merchant ship _Bahama_, he, with all hands, took passage in her. The cruiser, that was still known only as _No. 290_, was allowed to go on a trial trip. Although the ship was plainly a cruiser, and although men had testified under oath that they had shipped in her as a Confederate cruiser, the law officer of the customs authority decided that the evidence was insufficient, and she did not return from that trial trip. She met the _Bahama_ at Terceira, a Portuguese island, and there, a marine league from land, on Sunday, August 24, 1862, _No. 290_ became the _Alabama_, and Semmes her captain, in the usual form. She was without any doubt a Confederate man-of-war. The people who still persist in calling her a pirate craft are probably unaware that if she had really been a pirate the United States would never have presented any claims against Great Britain for the damages she did to American commerce. And as for Semmes, he is entitled, in his official capacity as her captain, to as courteous treatment at the hands of historians as any captains that ever went afloat. Of his personal character it need only be said that he has written it into his “Memoirs.” To his “Memoirs,” also, the reader may be referred for details of the burning of the hosts of American merchantmen that he captured. From Terceira the _Alabama_ made a cruise against the whalers off the Azores, and thence went to Martinique, where the American warship _San Jacinto_ found her. But Semmes escaped on the night of October 20, 1862. His first prize of consequence after this adventure was the _Ariel_ of the Panama line. She was expected to bring a million or so in gold, but in this Semmes was disappointed.