The C.S.S. Nashville was a 1,200 ton former passenger side-wheeler fitted as a commerce raider. Commanded by Lieutenant Robert B. Pegram, she slipped out of Charleston on October 26, 1861. Nearing the British Isles, she boarded and burned the Harvey Birch, an American merchantman bound from Le Havre to New York. The Harvey Birch was the first U.S. ship that commerce raiders destroyed in the north Atlantic during the war. The Nashville then docked in Southampton, the first Confederate ship of war to visit Britain. (By John Osborne)