The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama [SEP] creator
The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama
The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama is an 1864 oil painting by Édouard Manet. The painting commemorates the Battle of Cherbourg of 1864, a naval engagement between the Union cruiser USS "Kearsarge" and the Confederate raider CSS "Alabama". Many spectators were able to see the battle from the coast of France and saw that the USS "Kearsarge" sank the CSS "Alabama". Not having witnessed the battle himself, Manet relied on press descriptions of the fight to
struck his colors, threw his sword into the sea to avoid capture, and sent one of his two remaining longboats to "Kearsarge" with a message of surrender and a rescue appeal for his surviving crew. "Kearsarge" finally sent ship's boats for the majority of "Alabama"s survivors, but Semmes and 41 others were rescued instead by the nearby British yacht "Deerhound" and escaped to the United Kingdom.
The battle between "Kearsarge" and "Alabama" is honored by the United States Navy by a battle