CSS Alabama's Eastern Atlantic Expeditionary Raid

This time, it was the British colors hoisted as the Alabama gave chase, and shoots a 32-pounder just over the heads of the crew of the Starlight out of Boston, a fast schooner.

But luck returns, and on the afternoon of September 8 the ruse of the U.S. colors is used once again, successfully, to overtake the large whaler Ocean Rover, out of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The Ocean Rover is surprised to find that CSS Alabama is merely a "rebel" ship, and not a protecting U.S. privateer, such as Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, had promised the industry.

The Alert (the ship made famous by the American author Richard Henry Dana Jr.in his memoir Two Years Before the Mast), out of New London, shows no colors, and Semmes orders her to heave to, after demonstrating yet again the Alabama's 32-pounder.

After a thrilling all night chase, the new sail is found merely to be a Danish ship, and having no bones to pick with any of the world but Yankee vessels, Semmes lays off.

His crew needing rest from such enlightening activities, Captain Semmes sets course to the west, on a two-week cruise toward the New England coast, with hopes to increase the burning pace, thus ending CSS Alabama's expeditionary raid of the eastern Atlantic and Azores area.

From this raiding area in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, CSS Alabama departed and sailed west toward the northeastern seaboard of Newfoundland and New England along the North American coastline.