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THE SHENANDOAR.

By AN. OFFICER THEREOF.

The agents of the Navy Department who are engaged in
the compilation of the official records of the Union and Con-
federate Navies in the late war, have recently brought to
light, from Southern sources, a mass of hitherto unpublished
information of curious interest and value, relative to the oper-
ations of the Confederate privateer Shenandoah. In the de-
structiveness to Union property the work of the Shenandoah
was second only to that of the Alabama, and the former en-
joyed the peculiar distinction of having far outstripped the
records of all other cruisers in the length of her voyage and
the fact that she never met with the slightest opposition from
Union arms in her path of destruction, and continued her
depredations many months after the conclusion of the war.

It is worthy of remark that the Navy Department at Wash-
ington was in possession of information relative to her outfit
and plans early in the summer of 1864, but active search was
not instituted until January, 1865, and though the United
States ships Santee, Wachusett, Iroquois, Wyoming and the
European and Pacifie squadrons at large were successively
ordered in pursuit of her, none of them ever succeeded in
coming up with her, much less in engaging her in combat. In
August, 1865, her commander gained conclusive informa-
tion that the war had gone against the South, and he leis-
urely and uninterruptedly made his way to England, where
he gave himself and his ship into the hands of the British
Government.

The Shenandoah was a full-rigged ship of 1,000 tons and
250 horse-power, with a battery of four 8-inch guns—two
32-pounders and two 12-pounders. She was originally the
British ship Sea King, built in 1863 for the East Indian
trade. On her return voyage she was purchased by Confeder-
ate agents in Europe and fitted out as a eruiser in the Confed-