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What Does Competent Leadership Look Like? Here Are Three Clues

Philip Liebman, MLASClick here to view Philip Liebman, MLAS’ profile
Philip Liebman, MLAS
CEO, ALPS Leadership | CEO Performance Catalyst | Executive Leadership Coach | Author | Speaker |
Published Aug 14, 2016
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We naturally expect our leaders to be competent. We should actually demand it. But when you examine what it actually means to be a competent leader, it becomes clear that outstanding leaders are rare, mediocrity is the norm, and incompetent leaders can be spotted everywhere. From CEOs to elected officials, from scout leaders and schoolteachers, to priests and even top military leaders, we don’t have to search to hard to find people incompetent in their given roles. It would seem reasonable that competence would be a prerequisite for leadership. Why would anyone voluntarily follow in incapable leader? But competent leadership is not the norm and the acceptance of incompetence in all forms of performance has sadly become the status quo. It’s not just leadership where there is a performance gap – but if we can improve the ability of leaders to lead more effectively, we might have a better chance of improving the performance of everyone and everything else.

Leadership is often either assigned or assumed based on criteria that has nothing to do with one’s ability to perform competently in a leader’s role. Leaders may be chosen based on tenure or seniority within an organization, successful performance in a role that offers little or no leadership experience, having a presumed right to the position due to family or organizational lineage, or even based simply on charisma and popularity. But none of these qualities speak to having the preparation required to become a fully competent leader. The cause of problem might be that most people don’t know how to recognize competence in anyone’s performance, much less leadership. Fortunately, if we want to learn to search for competent leadership, there are clues to be found.

Incompetence and Competence Both Leave Clues…

Clue #1)

Evidence of competence is found in the wake of leadership…

It may be easier to recognize incompetence in leadership than to catalogue what it is that makes a leader competent. In either case, the clues won’t be found by observing the leader, but by observing the organization they lead. Competence is left in the wake of leadership. Competence is a result of having what it takes to accomplish the aims you choose or are charged with. Competence is more a matter of who you are or who you make yourself; it is a state of being not a form of action. Competence informs both how and why we do things.

“Competence is not what you CAN do... it is what you actually accomplish by what you do.”
The role of a leader is necessarily defined by the organization you lead. You might be an organization of one, by simply taking full responsibility for how you lead your life. And how you lead your life will be determined by the feelings, meaning values and beliefs that determine why you choose one way to live your life over another. When looking at larger organizations, the basis of a leader’s role becomes seemingly more complex – but it is actually no different. A competent leader feel a sense of duty to the organization she leads – and acts the role accordingly.

Clue #2.
Competence is Progressive With Five Identifiable Stages of Development

Nobody is born a leader: leadership must be both learned and earned. Some people seem to be born with a degree of talent or inclination, but without cultivation raw talent rarely comes to meet its full potential. And while people may have the best intentions surrounding their performance in life or a particular duty they have taken on, unless they develop the ability to perform competently they will accomplish very little.

The Five Stages of Competence:

Ability: We generally think of competence as having the talent or skills required to accomplish something acquired through training and or experience. Nobody can accomplish anything they are unable to. While being prepared to accomplish what we aim for is necessary, it is not in itself sufficient. A great many enormously talented people are incapable of performing competently in their given roles, just as a top-flight education does not qualify most graduates for real-world jobs. In order to be competent they need to be able to apply their talents and training to solve problems of either their choosing or other’s directions. This speaks to the need for internships and on-the-job training those graduating college.

Application: Being able to understand how to apply our talents and skills to solve the problems of the world is how we transform what we know into what we can accomplish. The problem is the bridge between what we are capable of accomplishing and what we actually accomplish. Crossing that bridge requires more than know-how. It requires being conscientious – which amounts to having the beliefs and values that inform us as to what is important (or not), providing a reason and drive to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. Without conscientiousness, those with talent and the ability to apply their skills to accomplish worthwhile things – typically languish in unrealized potential, and sometimes worse– and their failure to perform makes them the most insidious incompetents.
Basic Competence: The ability to perform and accomplish is what defines competence. Basic competence is realized when we connect a sense of purpose and make what we do a matter of who we are. When the meaning we make of what we feel driven to do translates into contributing to what we apply ourselves in some meaningful way, we are competent at what we are doing. And we generally know that based on a personal sense of accomplishment, a feeling of satisfaction that often trumps most other sources of happiness in life.

Mastery: This is where basic competence becomes reliable to our selves and others. When we can repeatedly demonstrate competence on demand we become valuable contributors to our personal needs, our organizations and to society. This the standard that designates the threshold to creating value at a rate that expands beyond what we consume. Mastery is the level of competence that sets us and society moving towards high performance of what we do – based on who we have caused ourselves to become.
Virtuosity: Mastery can become a trap. We often see people whom we believe to be fully competent go careening off course and even lose their way. No level of required performance, just like no level of success in life is ever static. If we fail to grow in our ability to perform, we will either struggle just to keep up or more likely be overtaken by whatever is aiming to replace us. Genetically this natural selection shows up over multiple generations, but when it comes to human performance we can be selected out at blinding speed. The stasis point is constant of learning and growth. When we become masterful in our accomplishments there're is a tendency to want to preserve the sense of accomplishments and suspend ourselves in the glory of our achievements. This, of course, is the “kiss of death” for competence. When we feel we know what we need to know, and don’t need to learn, we don’t. But virtuosos are the people who never stop learning, even when they reach a level of mastery that provides very few options to learn from others more masterful. The inner drive to improve transcends the need for teachers. The virtuoso is continuously dissatisfied with their performance, even while perhaps knowing that the world views them as the top of their game. This is the fullest expression of true competence. It is hard-wired and hard driven accomplishment-based performance.

Clue # 3.

Competence is Best Measured by the Value of the Contribution We Make

So how do we define accomplishment in terms of being competent?

Accomplishing nothing is still accomplishing something. Clearly there is a qualitative standard we apply to our accomplishments. Staying in bed all day doesn’t accomplish much for my teenage daughter, but complying with a doctor’s orders for bed rest might. And something might even be said for aiming to set a new world record for consecutive days, months, even years spent in bed – though I’m not sure what that something said might be.

Modern America is obsessed with winning. Society views competitiveness as a necessary virtue and winning as the reward. But winning is not always the most meaningful accomplishment. In fact, as we will see below, sometimes we accomplish more when we don’t win. The thing that distinguishes the quality of accomplishment always comes down to a matter of meaning. Some accomplishments are clearly, though in many cases subjectively more meaningful than others.

Winning Does Not Equal Meaningfulness.

You wouldn’t know this from looking at our deep cultural infatuation with competitive professional sports. Spoiled fans of dynasty sports teams (the New York Yankees would be a good example) are perennially disappointed or disillusioned because to them not winning makes a season meaningless. But not to the athletes who are competing. Win or lose, professional athletes are rewarded handsomely, some might argue obscenely for simply entertaining us – even if it leaves us miserably unhappy. Highly paid athletes are actually extremely competent. It’s what and how they contribute – which to the team’s interest may simply mean attracting more fans. It’s just that what they might accomplish isn’t necessarily what some or most of their fans want or pay to watch. But when they are no longer competent they are quickly exited from the game, and the many of the most competent players actually put themselves out to pasture – with plenty of means to make that a quite comfortable, five-star paddock.

Winning isn’t not only everything, it sometimes takes a backseat to not winning…

A “winners take all” mentality distorts what is meaningful and who is competent or not. And by the very nature of competition not everyone can be the winner. Not winning does not mean you have not accomplished anything worthwhile. In some cases, not winning can turn out to be extremely worthwhile.

Take the now fabled story of runner Dick Hoyt, who until the age of 72 made his greatest accomplishment how he lost more than 1,000 races. He is the father of Rick Hoyt, who has cerebral palsy that left him a paraplegic. As a team his father carried him through marathons, triathlons and even grueling iron man competitions – always to come in last. The Hoyt’s prove the point that accomplishment is always a matter of making meaning of what we do. They didn't just create meaning from these races for themselves; they made a profound impact of millions of people along the way. When what we aim for in life is truly meaningful, success is often measured long after the most apparent winner has celebrated, gone home and is fast asleep in bed.

In search of meaning

Most people at some point discover that winning can be meaningless, even empty. Anything won in the absence of a real challenge, or when winning is entirely expected is typically unfulfilling – especially when it becomes your status quo. How you win matters. And so does how you lose. Engaging with a young child in competition gives us a clear illustration. Crushing them with superiority of prowess that any average adult might muster feels like bullying – and it should. But putting up no challenge and making it easy for them to win also amounts to a disservice. It seems the most sensible approach is to provide a sufficient challenge to make the experience – win or lose, meaningful. Learning to lose or win and be a “good sport” about it is a valuable lesson we might be able to help them learn. The old saying is that it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game that counts. Perhaps it is really about how meaningful the experience is – and whether that might provide a means for us to become more competent in whatever it is we are playing.

This is no less true when the consequences are a matter of life or death. In “Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor Frankel tells of how even in a German concentration camp, how you play the game matters. Those who developed a deep sense of meaning around their dire situation were those who tended to survive. Those who managed to survive we're treated no better than those who did not. They should rightfully be considered victims no different than those who were murdered. (And to some extent, those who perished may have actually experienced some mercy by being spared from the further atrocities forced upon on those who managed to endure.) The survivors didn’t defeat their captors, but they did ultimately accomplish something extraordinary. More than seven decades later their experience continues to inform the world about the powerful and unthinkable evil that mankind is capable of with a clear warning to always be vigilant when it comes to basic dignity and human rights.

We shouldn’t do what we do because of what others think, but what others think does matter

While what is worthy or noble about us is found within us, what is meaningful about us is ultimately defined in the minds of others. It starts with what is meaningful to us, but unless we accomplish something relevant to others, it is unlikely that our efforts will be viewed as truly worthwhile.. A leader’s achievements are often forced to stand the test of time. Many of the world’s greatest achievements were posthumously credited to those who led them. This is not just true of martyrs. Competent leadership leaves a legacy. The impact Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin made on the world is far greater today than it was during their lifetimes. Their achievements transcend them as mortal human beings – and instead become a phenomenon larger than they were. A great worthy cause has a life of its own.

Great, visionary leaders often come to understand that what may be meaningful to us, even what might be most meaningful– might not be valuable to those we are charged with serving – or even anyone else besides ourselves. Steve Jobs was tenacious about building what he felt was necessary regardless of whether anyone happened to agree. Disruptive advances in technology are rarely welcomed at first with open arms. But it is in the ultimate value of the contribution we make that our accomplishments and competence are realized.

Beyond the fact that leaders may not be recognized for their competence by those they lead, it is also possible that a virtuoso leader will likely not even see herself as being fully or even sufficiently competent. The desire to constantly improve yourself and the world around us is often borne from a persistent dissatisfaction with the status quo. When there is a deep sense of duty to something larger than just yourself that drives our ambitions, it is neither fame or fortune that is our aim. Rather than calling attention to herself, such a leader continuously points to her cause. That is why competence is often seen from the wake left behind.

In this regard, competence is an aspiration, a journey that has no exact destination. We are competent, or not, in any given moment. But we can be prepared to be competent based on the choices we make.

The meaning of competence is obscured by a fuzzy and diluted definition…
In more primitive, clearly harder times, competence could be measured in terms of survival. If you were not competent as a hunter or farmer – you simply starved to death. If you were not competent as a protectors, your predators and enemies would have their way with you. If you were not competent to an employer you were unemployed. And of you were not competent as a human being – you were left to the resources of nature to take care of you – which meant you were not taken care of.

For mostly goo, things have clearly changed. A more seemingly humanistic sensibility has provided all sorts of safety nets – and an unintended consequence may be the the cultivation of institutional incompetence. It's not just that life is easier, and it's certainly not that competence is any less valuable, but in too many cases we find most functionally competent people are those who simply can work the system and compensate for their personal lack “meaningful competencies” or failure to make any sort of valuable contribution. Some of this can be attributed to a combination of laziness and cleverness. But this toxic combination thrives in the absence of high moral values and a sense of meaningful purpose, and is fortified by a status quo that is less and less capable of recognizing competence enough to clearly see the difference.

The Future of Competence and Leadership

The solution that best combats the general malaise of mediocrity and fostered incompetence is competent leadership. We need better leadership in our communities and schools, in our governments and civic institutions and in our homes. The world would also greatly benefit from increasing the presence of fully competent leadership in our business communities.

In “Conscious Capitalism” John Mackey and Raj Sisodia argue that capitalism has provided greater benefits to society than virtually any other institution in the history of the human race. I do know from my experience, the men and women who lead successful business are those best equipped and able to serve the social, economic and cultural needs of society. Beyond the financial means that their success generates they are well practiced in connecting purpose with accomplishment. The competence of their leadership yields competent organizations driven by competent people and effective systems. This efficacy on every scale outperforms government, politics and public policy and evidence of their contributions can be found virtually everywhere, from small rural towns to the greatest cities, from libraries, public parks and health clinics to hospitals, university research centers and even highways and bridges. Some are named honoring the heroes of capitalism, with many, if not most who contribute mightily, quietly existing in absolute anonymity.

If the product of competence is accomplishment, the trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the leadership that has truly shaped the miracles of modern society brings us to the intersection of competent leadership and the future we have at stake. If we want our future to fulfill the promise of human potential, we need to foster the ranks of fully competent leadership that will move us in that direction. In order for the surge of human advancement to be sustainable, we need to not only prepare our children and future generations with the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills we currently emphasize in education today. We must also and equally focus on the arts, communication and the cultivation of competent leadership that will enable society to apply our human and natural resources to build a secure a sustainable and better tomorrow.

Stephen Russell Mallory (1812 – November 9, 1873) served in the United States Senate as Senator (Democrat) from Florida from 1850 to the secession of his home state and the outbreak of the American Civil War. For much of that period, he was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. This was a time of rapid naval reform, and he insisted that the ships of the United States Navy should be as capable as those of Great Britain and France, the foremost navies in the world at that time. He also wrote a bill, and guided it through Congress, that provided for compulsory retirement of officers who did not meet the standards of the profession. Although he was not a leader in the secession movement, Mallory followed his state out of the Union. When the Confederate States of America was formed, he was named Secretary of the Navy in the administration of President Jefferson Davis. He held the position throughout the existence of the Confederacy. Because of indifference to naval matters by most others in the Confederacy, Mallory was able to shape the Confederate Navy according to the principles he had learned while serving in the US Senate. Some of his ideas, such as the incorporation of armor into warship construction, were quite successful and became standard in navies around the world. On the other hand, the navy was often handicapped by administrative ineptitude in the Navy Department. During the war, he was weakened politically by a Congressional investigation into the Navy Department for its failure in defense of New Orleans. After months of taking testimony, the investigating committee concluded that it had no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. Mallory resigned after the Confederate government had fled from Richmond at the end of the war. Following the final collapse of the Confederacy, he and several of his colleagues in the cabinet were imprisoned and charged with treason. After more than a year in prison, the public mood had softened, and he was granted parole by President Andrew Johnson. He returned to Florida, where he supported his family in his final years by again practicing law. Unable to hold elective office by the terms of his parole, he continued to make his opinions known by writing letters to newspapers. His health began to deteriorate, although he was not incapacitated until the very end. He died on November 9, 1873. He was the father of Stephen Russell Mallory, a U.S. Representative and Senator from Florida

The Stephen Mallory You May Not Have Known

Posted on February 4, 2021 by Phill Greenwalt

Little did I know that when I took the job as a park ranger at Everglades National Park I would come into contact, via research, with a name more familiar and associated with Civil War history than the history of the Everglades. But there is a link.

That connection was Stephen Russell Mallory who is best known as the only Confederate States of America’s Secretary of the Navy during the American Civil War.


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Stephen Russell Mallory (1812 – November 9, 1873) (courtesy of Florida Irish Heritage Center)

Mallory would serve in the cabinet of President Jefferson Davis until the end of the war, finally resigning as secretary on May 2, 1865 in La Grange, Georgia. During his time in office, Mallory would literally develop, build, and outfit a navy from scratch. His four-point strategy, outlined in a Mallory biographer, for the Confederate navy was;

First, to send out commerce raiders to destroy the enemy’s mercantile marine, build ironclad vessels in Southern shipyards for the purpose of defense, obtain or construct armored vessels that could menace the North on the high seas, and implement and test new weapons and techniques in naval warfare.

The debate on how successful Mallory was in this strategy is outside the scope of this particular post. However, what is not debatable was that Mallory was used to tall tasks.

Born in 1812 on the Caribbean Island of Trindad while his father, a construction engineer, who had originally come to the small British-controlled island for work. There he met his future wife, Ellen, and would have two sons, including Stephen.

Eight years later, in 1820, the family relocated to Key West in the Florida Keys. Stephen would initially head off to school in Alabama but when his father and older brother both died shortly apart, the surviving Mallory son returned home. As his widowed mother ran a boardinghouse for seamen, Stephen went off to school at a Moravian academy in Pennsylvania. In 1829, Stephen returned home, at the age of 17, when his mother could not foot the tuition, and that is where his formal education ended.


Ellen Mallory Boarding House

Ellen Mallory Boarding House in Key West, Florida (courtesy of Florida Irish Heritage Center)

Mallory began climbing in importance in Key West, first serving as a town marshal in 1832, then as Inspector of Customs, and the Collector of Customs. These posts were interrupted with his service in the Second Seminole War from 1835-1837. This is where he would come into contact with the expansive Everglades. Mallory was familiar with this unique multi-ecosystem environment, having “ate of its fish, drank of its waters, smelt of its snakes and alligators…”

During his time in service of the United States military, Mallory “waded through its mud up to my middle for weeks.”

After his military service and now back as Collector of Customs in Key West, Mallory was contacted by Buckingham Smith, who was among a plethora of other jobs, a surveyor whose work in the Everglades led to what was considered the first official publication on the area and went on to recommend that if man could lower the water level the area could become a mecca of farming.

However, one of the people that Smith consulted about surveying the Everglades was Mallory, who scoffed at the idea. One author of a seminal work on the Everglades, quoted Mallory as saying “that he might as well have surveyed the moon.”

In a prescient notion, Mallory told Smith;

“My own impression is that large tracts of the Glades are fully as low as the adjoining sea, and can never be drained; that some lands around the margins may be reclaimed by drainage or by diking, but that it will be found wholly out of the question to drain all the Ever Glades.”


key west

Key West, 1838 (courtesy of the State Archives of Florida)

Yet, all was not doom and gloom from Mallory’s responses that made its way into Smith’s report. The Key West scion did agree that fruit would grow in the Everglades hammocks (tree islands where hardwood trees grow on a natural rise of only a few inches in elevation) and that small farms could survive on the fringes of the vast swamp’s periphery.

Mallory would leave the South Florida landscape behind in 1850 when he took over from incumbent Senator David Yulee. Eleven years later and a place on the Committee of Naval Affairs followed. On January 21, 1861, Mallory would give his resignation speech and head south to the eventual position of Secretary of the Navy.

The Everglades seemed insurmountable to Mallory and maybe that gave him some perspective on the issues he would face as he created a navy and the accompanying department from scratch in the Confederate government. We may never know that answer for sure, but, I do know two things from this interesting research tangent.

One, that even in South Florida, in the middle of the Everglades, a connection to the Civil War can creep in.

Secondly, a trip to Key West is now in order!

From Rebel to Samurai – the epic career of the Confederate ironclad CSS Stonewall – Part 1

In 1864, two significant conflicts raged: the “Danish War”, in which Denmark resisted the combined forces of Prussia and Austria, and the Civil War that raged not only in North America but on the world’s oceans. A key feature was the construction of Confederate raiders in European shipyards, an effort masterminded by James Dunwoodie Bulloch, the Confederate agent described by the US State Department as “the most dangerous man in Europe” – and also the uncle of the future President, Theodore Roosevelt. These themes come together in my latest novel, Britannia’s Innocent (details at end of article), and it’s therefore a good time to tell about one of the most spectacular of the vessels ordered by Bulloch – the ironclad ram, CSS Stonewall.





CSS Stonewall



When thinking of the ocean-going navy of the Southern Confederacy in the American Civil War the image immediately comes to mind of fast, largely unarmoured vessels such as the Alabama and the Florida, general similar in construction terms to commercial vessels, albeit strengthened to carry heavy armament. The corresponding image of a Confederate ironclad is, by contrast, an armoured, improvised, steam-propelled raft intended for service in rivers and coastal waters. It is therefore somewhat of a surprise to learn that the Confederacy’s last “Blue-Water” naval vessel was a heavily-armed ironclad, well capable of sinking any major Union warship she encountered. Completed late in the conflict, only the end of the Civil War brought her potentially devastating career in Confederate service to an end just as it was starting. This was however to be just the prelude to spectacular battle-service in a newly created navy on the other side of the world.



The ship that was to become the CSS Stonewall was one of two ironclads constructed in France, personal approval for the project being given in 1863 by the Emperor Napoleon III, who was sympathetic to the Confederate cause. The objection that French neutrality would be compromised by delivery of warships to either the Union or to the Confederacy was neatly side-stepped by circulation of the rumour that they were intended for delivery to the Khedive of Egypt – the appropriate names of Sphynx and Cheops were allocated to them. A further element of confusion was added by ensuring that the armament would come from Britain. The seagoing ironclad concept was a new and revolutionary one at the time – France’s Gloire and Britain’s HMS Warrior, the first of the type, had been launched in 1859 and 1860 respectively – so the Confederacy was betting on acquiring cutting-edge naval technology.




Armouring of Cheops and Sphynx – note waterline belts and armoured redoubts for and aft



Sphynx and Cheops were of 1358 tons and some 190 feet long. Their 1200-hp steam engines, driving two screws, gave a top speed of over 10-knots. Twin rudders made for very tight turning circles – a decided advantage at a time when combat was likely to be at very close range. They also carried an auxiliary sail rig – especially valuable for conservation of coal when operating over long distances. The most notable feature was however the heavy armour protection – a waterline belt with thickness ranging from 3.5 to 5-inches of iron, as well as some 5-inches on the redoubts fore and aft in which the armament was housed. These latter structures were not rotating turrets, but rather protective casemates from which the guns fired through ports. As such they could be regarded as precursors of the later “central battery” type of ironclads, as compared with the traditional broadside arrangement of the earlier Gloire and Warrior. Sphynx and Cheops each carried a single 300-pounder muzzle-loading Armstrong forward, firing over the pronounced ram-bow, with two 68-pounder weapons in the after redoubt. As such they were built to absorb tremendous punishment as well as to deal it out.




Sail Plan of Cheops and Sphynx – note armouring above ram.

Note also how the weapons are carried high behind thick armour,



The vessels were constructed in Bordeaux, on France’s Atlantic coast, and were launched early in 1864. Human greed is however a major obstacle to keeping a project of this sort secret. In this case the subterfuge was exposed by a clerk at the shipyard who supplied information on the deal – and hard evidence, in the form of documentation – to the United States ambassador in Paris. With a diplomatic crisis about neutrality brewing, the French Government had no option but to block the sale. A new customer was immediately available however. Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck, supported by the Austro-Hungarians, had precipitated war with Denmark. Heavily outnumbered, the Danish resistance was fierce, heroic and doomed. The bright spot for Denmark was the performance of its navy, both in support of land operations and on the open sea. (Click here to see recent blog about the 1864 Battle of Heligoland). It was accordingly inevitable that both the Danes and their enemies should be looking to purchase more warships. Sphynx and Cheops would fit the bill to perfection. In a cynical deal in which a sale to one side was balanced by a sale to the other, the Sphynx was sold to Denmark – and renamed Stærkodder – while the Cheops was purchased by Prussia and called Prinz Adalbert. Thus were neutrality concerns sidestepped!


Denmark’s day of glory – the Niels Juel at the Battle of Heligoland, 9th May 1864



A Danish crew arrived in Bordeaux in June 1864 to start acceptance trials and take her to Denmark thereafter. (One wonders if there were any embarrassing encounters with a Prussian crew arriving to take over Prinz Adalbert!). The war was however winding down – with Denmark comprehensively beaten – and by 1st August a preliminary peace treaty had been signed. By the time Stærkodder arrived in Copenhagen all was over and she was by now essentially surplus to the requirements of the vanquished nation.



Confederate agents had however followed the Sphynx/ Stærkodder affair with interest and were still determined to acquire her. Negotiations – which must have required a high degree of secrecy – resulted in a sale by Denmark and in early January 1865 a Confederate crew commanded by Captain Thomas Jefferson Page (1808 – 1899) took delivery. The ship was commissioned at sea as the CSS Stonewall.



The second part of this article – due later this week – will tell of the game of hide-and-seek played by the CSS Stonewall with warships of the United States Navy.

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From Rebel to Samurai – the epic career of the Confederate ironclad Stonewall – Part 2

Part 1 of this article told of the genesis of the ironclad, CSS Stonewall. To read it, click here.





The Alabama/Kearsarge action by Édouard Manet



A major role is played in my new novel, Britannia’s Innocent, (click here, or at end of article, for details) by a Confederate warship constructed in Britain during the American Civil War. A number of such vessels were built in European yards as part of a programme masterminded by James Dunwoody Bullock, described by Union officials as “The most dangerous man in Europe” and uncle of the future President Theodore Roosevelt. Operating as commerce raiders striking at Union shipping, the most successful of these vessels was the CSS Alabama, built in Birkenhead, England, and largely manned by British seamen.



The CSS Alabama’s raiding career, which had ranged over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, ended when she was run down and sunk by the Union sloop-of-war USS Kearsarge just outside Cherbourg, France, in June 1864. Édouard Manet painted the scene, showing in the foreground one of the French pilot boats that went out to see the duel and pick up survivors. The CSS Alabama had captured or burned 65 Union merchantmen, and had taken over 2000 prisoners, without causing a single loss of life. Her captain, Raphael Semmes (1809-1877) was seen as the personification of courage, competence and chivalry.







Captain Raphael Semmes on board the CSS Alabama – the Beau Ideal of a naval officer. (The others are English pirates who formed the CSS Alabama's crew.)


Perhaps the most spectacular of all the European-built raiders was the CSS Stonewall, the complicated story of subterfuges that had disguised her construction and commissioning being told in the first part of this article. The end of Part 1 left the CSS Stonewall at sea after leaving Copenhagen, Denmark, in early January 1865 and now commissioned into Confederate service under Captain Thomas Jefferson Page (1808 – 1899). These events had not gone unnoticed by Union agents and diplomats and once intelligence was obtained of the CSS Stonewall’s “breakout” from the Baltic to the North Sea, and on to the Atlantic, powerful Union Navy units were despatched to find and sink her. There are strong parallels with the breakout of Germany’s battleship Bismarck in 1941 and her hunting by Royal Navy forces. Among the Union ships deployed were the steam-sloop USS Kearsarge – recently the victor of her duel with the CSS Alabama – and her sister USS Sacramento, supported later by the steam-frigate USS Niagara. Though the Kearsarge had been partly protected by improvised chain-armour, all these ships would have been at a decided – and perhaps fatal – disadvantage in any duel with the heavily-armoured CSS Stonewall.



Once at sea the CSS Stonewall developed a leak – it is notable that her now-Prussian sister Prinz Adalbert deteriorated so rapidly that she was taken from service in 1871. She put in at Quiberon, on France’s Brittany coast, where repair possibilities see to have been limited, and to take on supplies and further crew members. It is likely that many of these recruits were not American, as was the case also with other Confederate raiders, but men of other nationalities who were attracted by pay and by the opportunity for adventure. CSS Stonewall now pressed on to Ferrol, in North-West Spain, where she could undertake repairs. She remained there for almost two months. Word of her presence spread and the USS Sacramento and USS Niagara took up station outside. (One is reminded of HMS Shannon lying off Boston in 1813, daring the USS Chesapeake to come out).




A gun exposed on an open deck on the USS Kearsarge during her duel with the CSS Alabama.

It is clear that such ships would be at a disadvantage when facing a heavily armoured

vessel like the CSS Stonewall with its weapons sheltered behind 5-inches of iron plate.


(I would not be too sure of that. It looks like a Parrott. Those could swiss cheese the MNS Gloire. M.) 


When the CSS Stonewall did finally emerge from Ferrol on 24th March, the Union warships waiting for her declined to engage – wisely, in view of the disparity in armament and armour. Captain Page now headed for Lisbon, Portugal, to take on coal prior to a dash across the Atlantic to attack Port Royal in South Carolina, the supply base for the Union General Sherman’s army. The CSS Stonewall was followed into port at Lisbon by the USS Sacramento and USS Niagara – which under neutrality rules could only glower at their Confederate opponent. An attempt by the USS Niagara to shift her berth was interpreted by the Portuguese authorities as a potentially hostile move against the CSS Alabama. Warning shots from cannon on the castle of Belem put an end to the manoeuvre. Formal neutrality rules – demanding that enemy ships could not leave harbour simultaneously – were strictly applied by the Portuguese and the CSS Stonewall slipped away unmolested.




Portuguese battery at the Belem fort at Lisbon firing warning shots to restrain the USS Niagara before the situation was defused



Time was running out for the Confederacy however. On 9th April Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant and on 26th April the only other major Confederate force was surrendered by Johnson to Sherman. (Kirby-Smith’s smaller forces did not surrender until 2nd June). By the time that Captain Page and the CSS Stonewall put in at Nassau, in the British possession of the Bahamas, on 6th May, the epic conflict had ended. The ironclad and her crew were now orphans.



Captain Page decided to take his ship to Havana, in Cuba, then still a Spanish possession. He handed her over to the government authorities there against a payment of $16,000 and paid off her crew. The Spanish in turn handed the Stonewall to the United States in return for a similar payment. A direct payment from the Union government to purchase a Confederate asset was thus avoided.







A naval orphan – the Stonewall at anchor in Havana harbour



The triumphant Union now possessed one of the most powerful warships afloat, but in the aftermath of the Civil War there was little appetite for retention of a large navy – one which had indeed grown to gigantic levels during the conflict. The Stonewall lay decommissioned at the Washington Navy Yard for some two years until it was decided to sell her.



And the buyer?



Opened up to foreign contact only thirteen years before, the Empire of Japan was engaged on a furious, and historically-unprecedented, campaign of modernisation. Its ambitions were all but boundless and acquisition of an effective navy was of the highest priority. The ex-Confederate ironclad would be ideal for their purposes.



So the Stonewall would be heading east, and under a new name would embark on the most active part of her career . . .

Robert E. Lee, President of Washington College

August 10, 201701366

Robert E. Lee, Confederate General used his command experience in the revival of the Washington College, the future Washington and Lee University.

Robert E. Lee is arguably one of the finest military leaders in American History, a man respected throughout the United States, almost 140 years after his death. Less known is Lee’s role as educator. Under his innovative leadership, the first college of Journalism in the United States was created.

Lee’s command experience as the Superintendent of West Point Military Academy and later, the leader of an army poorly supplied and numerically inferior to the Union prepared him for his last mission in life. Lee restored the poorly managed Washington College to peak proficiency. Today that school is known as Washington and Lee University.

Lee as President of Washington College

Lee accepted the position as President of Washington College in August 1865. He had turned down more lucrative business offers. Lee accepted the position primarily because it gave him a significant role in rebuilding the South.

Lee appreciated the traditional studies of the classics, of Latin and Philosophy but knew that the devastated South was in need of competently trained professionals. Lee stated: “The importance of a more practical course of instruction in our schools and colleges… will tend to develop resources and promote the interests of the country.”

Washington College Revival

Lee’s first three years of administration carried Washington College through a time of prosperous change. When he arrived in 1865, the college had four faculty members, 50 students and was fiscally close to bankruptcy. By 1868, the faculty number had tripled, the student body boasted 400 members and Lee’s fundraising efforts had secured a $225,000 endowment needed to maintain operations. The school curriculum hosted traditional subjects and added more practical forms of education in science and engineering.

Printing and Journalism at Washington College

Washington College’s Board of Trustees, pleased with Lee’s progress, authorized the faculty in 1863, to expand the college’s “scientific and practical departments.” Under Lee’s supervision, the faculty began a plan of curriculum growth. To this end, Lee endorsed Professor Preston Johnston’s report and made journalism education history. Johnston called for scholarships for students who proposed “to make journalism and printing their profession.” Collaboration between faculty and Major John J. Lafferty publisher of the Virginia Gazette, began on June 23, 1869. Lafferty was tasked as “hands-on” trainer for students engaged in practical printing and journalism work beyond the bounds of classroom instruction.

Lee’s innovative program was the first in the nation to combine liberal studies with practical printing and journalism applications. The program was met with angst by those who apprenticed as printers and later editors. Other people were pleased with the college training. John Plaxton of the Tennessee Typographic Union #20 praised the Washington College program as an “important step toward raising American Journalism from the slough of venality, corruption, and party subserviency into… to the high position it should occupy.”

Washington College Renamed Washington and Lee University

Within five years, Lee and his faculty brought Washington College to new levels of prosperity and prestige. While ardent about helping the South to rebuild, Lee opened the doors on education that attracted sons from North and South. Lee had achieved his final life victory here in Lexington, Virginia. He died on October 12, 1870, and was buried at Lee Chapel. Immediately thereafter the institution was renamed Washington and Lee University.