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Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship | 
 enlarge | Authors: John Baldwin, Ron Powers
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.95
You Save: $11.00 (74%)
New (35) Used (21) from $3.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 177938
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307236560
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780307236562
ASIN: 0307236560
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.
Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates.
What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Real Life High Seas Adventure December 2, 2008
I picked this book up for something to read on a three week business trip. I finished it well before I did my trip.
The story of the 'round the world journey of this superb ship and her cobbled together crew was enthralling. The author vividly weaves together contemporary accounts, historical records, secondary source material and his own thoughts into a story that flows well and gives the reader a sense of the joy and heartache felt by the men on this fateful mission.
It's also refreshing to read about this closing act of the war. So much has been written about the opening acts (Fort Sumter, Manassas, etc) and very little about the closing. This book focuses on one of these closing acts on the high seas while at the same time relating it to the bigger picture of the "Lost Cause."
Some readers have commented that this book is a bit biased due to the author's relation to its principle character. I counter that Mr. Baldwin made the correct decision in doing this. By relying primarily on his ancestor's journal/log for much of the story, his final product is light years better with a unique voice that would not had been possible had he simply restated what other authors have said before.
In summary, this is a fascinating look into a little known final chapter of the Confederacy and a darn good nautical yarn as well.
An unforgettable epic November 23, 2008
My unqulifyed endorsement of this epic is no doubt predudiced by my personal adventures as an 88-year-old WW-11 haval officer. I can't recall ever being so completly captivated by the recorded adventures of the kindred spirit who passed on in the year of my birth-1920. The experience of being confined at sea for extended periods with disparate personalities will test the patience of any man.....and Conway Whittle was a man among men. I salute his memory.
Al Kayworth, author
Abenaki Warrior
Legends of the Pond
The Scalp Hunters
Iceman to the Internet
 Author's bias and speculations distract from an otherwise good book. June 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book should have been advertised more as the biography of the executive officer of the ship, Conway Whittle. The author is in fact one of his descendants and he wrote this book mostly from Mr. Whittle's log book and perspective and the book shows this bias from start to finish. The author also includes many analogies and speculative reasoning throughout much of this book which for me created a distraction as the reader (-1 star).
I found this book hard to stay engaged with. I could easily put it down and pick back up days later. For me, it wasn't a "page turner". (-1 star)
One of the things that I did like was that it's written from the Southern perspective, and did not fall into the more modern diatribe of anti-southern, racist bias that most current Civil War writings are featuring.
Good book - but slanted May 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good read but a very much "slanted" perspective......to be expected I suppose - since the author is a direct descendent of the "hero" of his tale - the ship's XO.........but not the "co-commander" as he contends.
The captain of the ship was Waddell.......not Mr. Whittle.
While the book is interesting, I found Schooler's "The Last Shot" to be a much more balanced historical account.......since he did not "have a dog in the fight".
Reads more like a documentary... February 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book is historical non-fiction about the Civil War exploits of the Confederate raider, Shenandoah and its crew. The Shenandoah was sent on a mission to disrupt Union merchant commerce, primarily whaling ships near the Aleutian Islands. To that end the ship sailed around the world, in nearly a year long voyage, plotting an easterly course from its beginnings in the Atlantic Ocean, around the tip of Africa, stopping in Australia before reaching very near the Arctic Circle, raiding and burning unarmed Union merchant vessels along the way. It should be noted the text is based almost entirely on the log book entries of Lt. Conway Whittle, the executive officer of the ship. Much of the text details ship board life in the mid-19th century; the need for ship supplies, navigation, maintenance of the deck and rigging, crew discipline, weather and such. And from that I found it to be an interesting read. The book opens with a bit of cloak and dagger as the ship is outfitted and then sails from Liverpool, England in secret. After the initial success of the first capture and destruction of a Union merchant ship, this same process of; firing a blank shot across the enemy ship's bow, running them down, boarding the ship and asking for papers of ownership, confiscating the cargo, taking the prisoners and then burning the ship the action varied very little and was simply repeated over and over again. There were no engagements with Union warships exchanging cannon broadsides at any point in the voyage and not a single shot was fired (save for the warning shot) at any time. In the end I found I was getting weary, not only for myself reading the documentary like text, but for the crew to just get to the end of this seemingly non-ending voyage. It was what I would consider fairly "dry" read as the simple log book recording of events is recited. I honestly think this story would play much better as a movie where the drama of the life and death struggle fighting gale force winds with waves crashing over the decking and the compelling drama of shipmates in conflict would have a much more visceral impact. I couldn't help but think of the movie, Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. The book however brings closure nicely, with a bit of a twist, on this footnote of Civil War history with an epilogue of the key figures. I would recommend this book for any general Civil War historian or one who simply enjoys reading about 19th century sailing and all its perils.
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