Civil service: nearly 150 years after their celebrated battle far from home, a Union ship and its Confederate foe are remembered in France.(Points Of Interest)

Publication: Smithsonian

Publication Date: 01-FEB-05

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In a 19th-century hillside cemetery above a bustling port, two weathered stone crosses mark the graves of George Appleby and James King, Confederate seamen who died in a Civil War naval battle on June 19, 1864, seven nautical miles offshore. A few feet away stands a seven-foot-high granite obelisk memorializing William L. Gowen, who died eight days later from injuries received in the same skirmish. Gowen was a Yankee.

It's unusual for Civil War enemies to wind up as next-door neighbors for eternity. But odder still, these graves--and the watery battlefield where the three met their fate--are thousands of miles from Union or Rebel territory. They're in France.

In that contest 140 years ago, the Union sloop USS Kearsarge sank the notorious rebel raider CSS Alabama in the English Channel just off Cherbourg, on the Normandy coast. In a ceremony there this past September, the Civil War Preservation Trust named Cherbourg, a transatlantic port city that has served U.S.-bound British ships from the Titanic to the Queen Mary 2, an official site of the American Civil War--the only such site outside the United States. The designation was the latest recognition of the enduring interest in the remarkable battle and especially its loser, the greatest Confederate commerce raider of them all.

During the war, disruption of Union commerce became a key part of the Confederacy's strategy. But with Southern ports blockaded, Confederacy leaders looked abroad...

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