For nearly two years she made herself a terror to American merchantmen, and was the despair of the American navy, which had no ship capable of steaming one half so fast as she could do. In effect she swept American commerce from the seas, not so much by her captures of American merchantmen as by her perpetual threat of capture which rendered it a bad speculation for any American merchant to send a ship to sea, and thus subject her to the possibility of capture by the _Alabama_. In June, 1864, the _Alabama_ put into the harbor of Cherbourg, France. The _Kearsarge_, a United States war vessel under command of John A. Winslow, lay off the harbor, waiting for the _Alabama_ to come out. The one vessel could not attack the other in a neutral port, or within three miles of the shore. But when the _Alabama_ steamed out to a distance of perhaps eight miles, she was assailed by the _Kearsarge_, and a fierce battle ensued. The two ships were substantially the same in size, but the _Kearsarge_ was a chain protected vessel, stronger in every way than her Confederate adversary, and on that Sunday morning of June nineteenth, 1864, she made short work of the Confederate cruiser. The _Alabama_ was quickly riddled, and went down stern foremost. Many of her crew went down with her and perished in the sea. The remainder of them were picked up by a British yacht and carried in safety to England. There were other Confederate cruisers like unto the _Alabama_, including the _Shenandoah_, the _Florida_, the _Tallahassee_, the _Tacony_, and the _Georgia_. These ships largely aided in that destruction of American commerce in which the _Alabama_ had taken the lead. But none of them had so picturesque a career as was that of the _Alabama_, while the careers of all of them are fitly represented by that of Admiral Semmes's ship. The destructive activities of these ships were afterwards made the subject of an international arbitration, and Great Britain was condemned to pay to the United States an indemnity of $15,500,000 for her neglect of international comity in permitting them to sail from her ports. CHAPTER XLIX SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ATLANTA