[Alter Kaker]

17 United States sailors of the USS Kearsarge were awarded the Medal of Honor in the Battle of Cherbourg, sinking the rebel pirate ship Alabama.

And the Alabama was in fact a pirate ship, by the admission of its own captain, Mr. Semmes.

[Fiji Hill]

Off the three-mile limit in '64,
(Roll, Alabama, roll!)
The Alabama sank to the ocean floor.
(Oh, roll, Alabama, roll!)

The Alabama was all they got;
(Roll, Alabama, roll!)
Captain Semmes escaped on a British yacht.
(Oh, roll, Alabama, roll!)

--from The Alabama (c. 1870)

[Fiji Hill]

After the war, Confederate partisans named a range of hills near Lone Pine, Calif. the Alabama Hills, after the ship. In the twentieth century, dozens of movies, mostly westerns, were shot in the Alabama Hills. Many of these are shown at an annual film festival in Lone Pine.

To even the score, Union partisans in the area established Kearsarge City, a mining community which became a ghost town when the mines petered out, and Kearsarge Pass, a popular destination for hikers today.

[DoodleDawg]

If memory serves, Raphael Semmes was the only many to hold flag rank in both the army and the navy simultaneously - Rear Admiral in the Confederate Navy and Brigadier General in the Confederate Army.