American naval officer, born in Charles County, MD, on the 27th of September 1809. He was secretary of the Lighthouse Board in 1859–61, but resigned at the beginning of the Civil War, and joined the Confederate navy. He obtained great notoriety by his exploits as commander of the sidewheel steamer Sumter, with which he captured eighteen merchantmen. In August 1863, he took command of the fast steamer Alabama, at the Azores Islands, put to sea, and captured sixty-two American merchantmen, most of which he burned at sea. In 1863 the Alabama was sunk in the English Channel by the United States vessel Kearsarge. He was appointed rear-admiral in 1864, and ordered to the James River squadron, with which he guarded the water-approaches to Richmond until the city was evacuated. At Greensboro, NC, on May 1, 1865, he participated in the capitulation of General Johnston’s army. He returned to Mobile, and opened a law office. There, on December 15, 1865, he was arrested by order of Secretary Welles and imprisoned for some months, but subsequently released without trial. Semmes was afterward an editor of a daily paper at Mobile, but soon became a professor in the Louisiana Military Institute at New Orleans. Later, he returned to the practice of law at Mobile. His adventures are recorded in Memoir of Service Afloat During the War Between the States (1869); he also wrote Campaign of General Scott in the Valley of Mexico (1852); and other similar works. His career of destruction gave occasion to the “Alabama Claims.” He died in Point Clear on the 30th of August 1877.
