Posted 9/25/2004 02:11:00 PM by Douglas

Why is there a Civil War Monument. . . in France?

American cannon blasts bellowed in the English Channel 140 years ago, and bloodied bodies lined the deck of a sinking Confederate ship. Teary onlookers watched in horror from the Normandy coast.

On June 19, 1864, far from battlefields at home, the USS Kearsarge hunted down and sank a dreaded Confederate raider in one of the most important naval battles of the U.S. Civil War - off the coast of France.

The Confederate State Ship Alabama today lies where it sank under 198 feet of swirling currents about 7 nautical miles off the French town of Cherbourg.

On Thursday, the Civil War Preservation Trust, an American nonprofit group, named this English Channel town a historic Civil War site - the first outside the United States. Officials dedicated a plaque commemorating the battle at the Cite de la Mer museum, which is exhibiting a cannon recovered from the Alabama.

Damn Yankees!