Charles Francis Adams to George Villiers Clarendon, December 28, 1865

Mr. Adams to Lord Clarendon.

My Lord: Entertaining no desire to reopen the questions already discussed in connection with the steamer Shenandoah, I propose to submit the accompanying letter from the consul of the United States at Liverpool, and the two depositions to which it refers, solely for the purpose of placing more fully on the record what appear to be the facts connected with her cruise.

The points to which I desire particularly to call your lordship’s attention are these:

1. In your note to me of the 2d instant you state “that no armed vessel departed during this war from a British port to cruise against the commerce of the United States.”

2. In your note of the 4th of November your lordship is pleased to rely on the authority of the commander of the Shenandoah for the statement that he committed no depredations upon the commerce of the United States after he knew that the rebellion had been suppressed.

3. In the same note you state, on the authority of the report of the officer sent to muster the crew, that there were no persons known to be British subjects on board.

On the other hand, with the aid of the narrative and list of the crew herewith submitted, I trust it may be made to appear—

1. That the Sea King did depart from a British port armed with all the means she ever had occasion to use in the course of her cruise against the commerce of the United States; and that no inconsiderable portion of her hostile career was passed whilst she was still registered as a British vessel, with a British owner, on the official records of the kingdom.

2. That the commander had been made fully aware of the suppression of the rebellion the very day before he committed a series of outrages on innocent, industrious, and unarmed citizens of the United States in the sea of Okhotsk.

3. The list of the crew herewith submitted, with all the particulars attending the sources from which the persons were drawn, is believed to be so far substantially correct as to set at rest the pretence of the officer sent on board that there were no British subjects belonging to the vessel.

Deeming it to be of the utmost importance to the establishment of the precise relations of neutral powers towards belligerents in future emergencies that all the facts attending the share taken by her Britannic Majesty’s subjects in the late war should be clearly placed before the world, I have ventured to take the liberty to ask of your lordship the privilege to consider these papers as intended to modify, so far as they may be fairly entitled to be regarded as doing so, the allegations of fact which appear in the notes to which they respectively refer.

I pray, &c.