THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE KEARSAGE ' AND THE ALABAMA.'
[TO TER EDITOR Or THY " SPICTATOS.']
SIR,—The extremely interesting particulars relating to the celebrated naval duel between the Kearsage ' and the Alabama' off Cherbourg in June, 1864, given by Mr. Walker in your last issue, induce me to tell you of one little detail relating to that fight which may possibly interest some of your South-Coast readers. The engagement took place, as Mr. Walker mentions, on a Sunday,—a day I can remember almost as if it were yesterday. It was a cloudless, sunny, early- summer day, with just a slight haze, and all the extreme still- ness of a country Sunday. We had just come out of the old church of Fordington, in Dorset (the parish lying part in and part out of the borough of Dorchester), when my father called our attention to the faint sound of distant guns, saying some- thing to the effect that they were " surely fighting somewhere out at sea, for we should not otherwise hear guns on Sunday." We listened, and for some time heard at intervals the boom of distant guns. Two days later the papers brought us news of the battle between the two ships, and of the sinking of the battered 'Alabama' to her last berth, nearly eighty miles from where we had stood on the village green on that quiet Sunday morning, listeners to the far-off fight. The lasting impression made upon me—then just thirteen years of age- is possibly due to my having, as a child, heard much talk of the Crimean War, and later of the Indian Mutiny, my mind being thus prepared to vividly recollect the distant booming of the guns of the American frigates as the first sound of actual warfare I had ever heard.—I am, Sir, &c.,
E. R. PEARCE EDGCUMBE.
Somerleigh Court, Dorchester, July 21st.
[An account of the same statement on the same day is sent us from Knoll Hill near Bridgwater, where the firing of the guns was distinctly heard.—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
