After a successful six months in the Caribbean, the Confederate commerce raider Alabama moved its operations in February 1863 to the islands off Brazil to continue to disrupt U.S. maritime trade. The Amazonian was one of the twenty-nine ships she seized during this period. The 480-ton New York bark was bound from Boston to Montevideo in Uruguay with a cargo of oil and varnish that made a spectacular fire when, as usual, the Alabama took off what she could use and burned the captured vessel. (By John Osborne)