3-016-844 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Alabama destroying the Texan Star, or Martaban, in the Malacca Straits - the Kwan-Tung, Chinese war-steamer, in the distance, 1864. Engraving from a sketch by Commander Allen Young, R.N. who '...observed the Confederate man-of-war Alabama...[showing] foreign colours...At five in the afternoon the Kwan-Tung again came suddenly upon the Alabama, which, having captured a barque, was then in the act of destroying her. This barque, which proved to be the Texan Star, alias the Martaban, bound to Singapore with a rice cargo, was then lying in the position which our Engraving represents; her sails were clewed up, her anchor was down in about fifteen fathoms water, and the fire was breaking out at both ends. The crew having been removed, the Alabama cut the barque's boat adrift and steamed away at full speed...until midnight, when she was seen suddenly to alter her course towards Malacca, where it appears she landed the captured crew. The Texan Star when last seen was one mass of flame fore and aft, her masts had fallen by the board, and, while fast burning to the water's edge, she cast through the intense darkness of the night a brilliant gleam of light, at once a beacon to the navigator and a warning to all Federal ships in those waters'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.