Alabama, The, a famous privateer of the Confederate States. The Alabama was a wooden steam-sloop built for the Confederacy at Birkenhead near Liverpool, England. The English government was warned by the United States minister, Charles Francis Adams, that a suspicious sloop, known in the shipyard as No. 290, was being fitted with port holes and heavy guns, and that circumstances indicated its being built for a privateer. In July, 1862, the sloop steamed out of the Mersey on an alleged trial trip. Once outside, it was provided with an armament of cannon and a supply of military stores. Captain Raphael Semmes, an able seaman, took command with a crew of eighty British sailors, and at once began the capture of American merchant ships. Owing to the blockade of the American coast, the Alabama was never able to enter a Confederate harbor, but she captured and sold or sank sixty-five vessels valued at $6,000,000, before she was run to harbor at Cherbourg, France, by the United States warship Kearsarge. Captain Semmes steamed boldly out to fight, but his wooden ship was sent to the bottom. A number of other ships fitted out in British ports did similar service for the Confederacy, driving American commerce practically off the sea. Shippers were afraid to entrust freight to boats flying the United States flag. At the close of the Civil War the United States presented to the British government a claim for damages. The "Alabama Claims," as the case was called, was the subject of prolonged diplomatic correspondence and negotiation. In 1871 the matter was referred to an arbitration tribunal composed of five members, appointed one each by the King of Italy, the Emperor of Brazil, the President of the Swiss Confederation, the Queen of Great Britain, and the President of the United States. The tribunal sat at Geneva. It threw out the claims of the United States for expense in chasing the privateer, decided that Great Britain was not to blame for the departure of some of the ships, but that due diligence was not used by the British government particularly in the case of the Alabama, and finally awarded the United States $15,500,000 with which to pay the losses of ship owners. The sum was large, and so late in coming that a large part of it yet lies in the United States Treasury unclaimed. The thorough way in which the Alabama claims were inquired into, and the honorable course of Great Britain in settling them, has done much to define the duties of neutral countries in time of war, and to advance arbitration as the means of disposing of differences between nations. See CIVIL WAR; ARBITRATION; PRIVATEERING.