It is to the credit of Captain Semmes that he had no wish to escape the Federal ship, though he says that had he known that the _Kearsarge_ had been armored by placing iron cables on her sides opposite her machinery he should not have done so. Ship for ship and crew for crew, the _Alabama_ was inferior to the _Kearsarge_ by a greater extent than has usually been told in history. In size they were practically the same--1,031 tons for the _Kearsarge_ and 1,016 for the _Alabama_, but the _Kearsarge_ was the swifter ship of the two. The _Alabama_ carried eight guns, and she fired 328 pounds of metal at a broadside. The _Kearsarge_ carried seven guns, and fired 366 pounds at a broadside; but these figures do not fully tell the superiority of the guns of the _Kearsarge_, for her two pivots were eleven-inch Dahlgrens, a style of gun that, at the range of this battle, and in a fight between unarmored ships, were far superior to the 100-pounder Blakely and the eight-inch (sixty-four-pounder) smooth-bore on the _Alabama_. And, then, in the crews the _Kearsarge_ carried 163 men, chiefly Americans, to the _Alabama’s_ 149, almost exclusively Europeans. The officers of the _Alabama_ were about the only ones who had any sentiment in the fight; the men before the mast were at best filibusters--as ragged a crew (mentally) as that of the _Bonhomme Richard_. That they should have made any fight at all was due to the training received from men who had been reared under the old flag. Another great difference was in the powder, for that on the _Alabama_ was very old and bad. The _Alabama_ remained in Cherbourg until Sunday, June 19, 1864, when soon after 9 o’clock Semmes headed her out of the harbor. The French ironclad _Couronne_ went along to see that the fight took place three sea miles from shore, and a steam yacht, the _Deerhound_, followed to give her owner and his family a chance to see a sea battle. The shores were soon covered with equally eager if less fortunate spectators, trains being run from Paris to bring people to the fight. And the sympathy of nearly all the spectators was with the Confederate ship. Captain Winslow steamed off shore until seven miles from land, and then at 10.50 o’clock turned and drove the _Kearsarge_ straight at the Confederate cruiser. At 10.57, when the ships were yet 1,800 yards apart, the _Alabama_ yawed enough to open fire with a broadside. It was aimed rather worse, perhaps, than that which the _Oneida_ fired into the _Florida_ off Mobile, for the shot flew over the _Kearsarge_. Two more broadsides were fired from the _Alabama_ as the _Kearsarge_ approached head on, but when the _Kearsarge_, at a range of 900 yards, was seen to be heading to run across the _Alabama’s_ stern, the _Alabama_ started off in a way that set the two ships running “in a circle against the sun”--starboard side to starboard side, gradually approaching nearer and nearer, while the current swept them slowly down the coast.