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U.S.S. Kearsarge | Limited Edition of 150 Kits Kearsarge was built at Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, under the 1861 American Civil War emergency shipbuilding program and was commissioned on 24 January 1862, with Captain Charles W. Pickering in command. Soon after, she was hunting for Confederate raiders in European waters. Kearsarge departed Portsmouth on 5 February 1862 for the coast of Spain. She then sailed to Gibraltar to join the blockade of Confederate raider CSS Sumter, forcing the ship’s abandonment there in December of 1862. From Cadiz in November of 1862 until March 1863 Kearsarge prepared for her engagement with Alabama; she searched for the raider ranging along the coast of Northern Europe all the way to the Canaries, Madeira, and the Outer Hebrides.

The following year, on 14 June 1864, Kearsarge arrived at Cherbourg and found Alabama in port. On 19 June, Alabama stood out of Cherbourg Harbor for her last action. Mindful of French neutrality, Kearsarge’s new commanding officer, Capt. John A. Winslow, took the sloop-of-war clear of territorial waters, then turned to meet the Confederate cruiser. One hour after she fired her first salvo, Alabama was reduced to a sinking wreck by Kearsarge’s more accurate gunnery and its powerful 11 in (280 mm) Dahlgren smoothbore pivot cannons. Alabama went down by the stern shortly after Semmes 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.