Location: US 15/501 (Hillsborough Street) in Pittsboro
County: Chatham
Original Date Cast: 1939
James I. Waddell, and the crew of his ship the CSS Shenandoah, took part in one of the final episodes in the history of the Confederacy. On November 6, 1865, the Shenandoah lowered the Confederate flag and Waddell surrendered command of his vessel to British authorities in Liverpool, a full six months after Robert E Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Waddell, a native of Pittsboro, had led his men on a circumnavigation of the world, capturing and destroying Union merchant ships for the Confederacy.
Born in Pittsboro in 1824, Waddell was still young when his parents relocated to Louisiana, leaving him to live with his grandmother, Sarah Waddell Pitts, and then with his grandfather, Albert Moore. He was educated in local schools and at the Bingham School in Hillsborough before being appointed to the United States Navy as a midshipman in September 1841.
Joining the Navy in 1841, Waddell served on active duty during the Mexican-American War until 1847. In 1847, Waddell enrolled in the Naval Academy in Annapolis, finishing in 1849 and establishing his permanent home there. Waddell spent the next decade on a variety of assignments for the Navy. He was on assignment in 1861 at St Helena in the South Atlantic when he first learned of the South’s secession.
Waddell returned and resigned from the United States Navy. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Confederate Navy on March 27,1862. During 1862 Waddell helped with the defense of New Orleans and worked in ports along the coast. In 1863 he moved to England with his wife and waited to be given control of a Confederate vessel. After complicated maneuvering and covert operations, Waddell gained control of the disguised merchant ship the Sea King at Madeira Island and renamed it the CSS Shenandoah in October 1864.
The CSS Shenandoah was a Confederate raider, its objective being to destroy merchant whaling ships of the Union in order to damage the Union’s wartime economy and promote the end of the war. The Shenandoah became the Confederacy’s most successful raiders, capturing thirty-eight Union vessels and over 1,000 prisoners of war. Because of slow communications though, the crew of the Shenandoah did not know about Lee’s surrender until June 1865 or the total Southern defeat until August 1865. In the weeks before receiving word, the Shenandoah captured twenty-five vessels between May 27 and June 28.
Waddell received official word of the Confederate defeat while approaching San Francisco in August 1865. Directing his ship southward to avoid American retribution for unintentional acts of piracy, he rounded Cape Horn and sailed for England during the fall of 1865. Finally surrendering in Liverpool in November 1865, the Shenandoah was the only Confederate ship to successfully circumnavigate the world and traveled 58,000 miles during its year at sea.
Following the surrender of the CSS Shenandoah, Waddell remained in England and in time returned to Annapolis, and continued work in the naval industry. He served as a steamship operator and worked in the Maryland fishery industry. His boyhood home in Chatham County has now been destroyed but was located in downtown Pittsboro.
References:
Lindley S. Butler, Pirates, Privateers and Rebel Raiders of the North Carolina Coast (2000)
Samuel A. Ashe, “Captain James Iredell Waddell,” North Carolina Booklet, XIII, no. 2 (October 1913): 126-144
William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006)—sketch by John R. deTreville
Rachel Osborn and Ruth Seldon-Strugill, Architectural History of Chatham County, North Carolina (1991)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, VI, 106—sketch by E. M. Chambers