I have one question for hunters everywhere, but especially for Vice President "Shotgun" Cheney: Why shoot lawyers if you don't eat them?

This week, while newspapers reported breathlessly on Dick Cheney's pathetic adventure, I've been reading Sea of Gray about the sleek Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah and her exploits attacking helpless birds, I mean helpless Yankee merchant ships, during the US Civil War.

Our Vice President also entertains himself attacking things. Last week the VP and friends bagged forty quail and one Texas lawyer.

What happened to the birds? We know what happened to the lawyer. He's in the hospital.

Sailing a Confederate raider avoided service in the bloodiest part of the Civil War. News was slow to reach a ship at sea. Each time the raiders went to port or captured a merchant ship they'd discover the latest war news, and it was never good. But they sailored on.

What is the connection with the Vice President, you might wonder? Well, for one thing, he too lives in a communications bubble far from a war he can't win.

I really don't know how I came to be reading Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah. The book came in the mail, and I simply started in, stunned by the details of a story I never knew existed. The book is definitively researched, stuffed with intrigue and incident.

Scholar-author Tom Chaffin is writing about a place and a time you might think has been written to death, so to speak. It turns out only Civil War buffs know much about Confederate naval adventures. Steadily losing the land war to Union forces, Southern planners pinned their hopes for propaganda victories on a string of ships purchased overseas and sent on missions to capture and harass Yankee shipping.

The Confederates hoped to encourage New England merchants to sue their government for an end to the conflict. Failing that, perhaps England or France would drop their neutrality and come to the Confederacy's defense. That was the hope, anyway.

"Over... four years of war, the Confederates had dispatched at least twelve such cruisers into the worlds oceans, charging them with destroying private, unarmed Union merchant, fishing and whaling vessels."

While the most bloody war in US history was grinding along on land, and the Union was destroying and blockading Southern ports, Confederate adventurers pursued unarmed merchants on the high seas, taking their supplies, drafting some of their sailors into the Confederate navy, and sinking the captured ships in great, fiery conflagrations.

Sea of Gray begins at the moment of the CSS Shenandoah's greatest victory, a surprise attack under false colors on a group of nine Yankee whalers huddled up in the strait between Siberia and Alaska.

On the day of the attack, June 28, 1865, the Civil War had been over for more than two months, peace having been concluded on April 9 at Appomattox Courthouse. The whalers knew this from newspapers; Confederate Captain James Waddell chose to disbelieve their protestations, and sank them all.

The Confederate Steam Ship Shenandoah was a fast and modern clipper ship originally designed for the India trade. She was fully masted as a sailing ship, and had the advantage of a steam engine as well. Her Confederate voyage started in a state of great secrecy in England and continued around the world for 58,000 miles. At first she was a wartime privateer; later a pirate with no nation to authorize her continued existence.

The crew of the CSS Shenandoah destroyed 32 Union merchant ships, ransomed six others, took 1,053 prisoners, braved storms and diplomatic intrigue. Officers and crew alike suffered deprivation along with a growing dread sense that the Confederate cause was crumbling.

Still, they were proud and fearless. Captain Waddell later boasted, "The last gun in defense of the South was fired from her deck."

Captain and polyglot crew eventually achieved an honorable surrender on English soil. Crew members dispersed to their homes around the world; most of the Confederate officers eventually made it back to the United States under pardons.

The story of the CSS Shenandoah is a fascinating tale. It's as American as shooting lawyers in Texas.

Aired Sunday February 19, 2006 at 10:55 am and Monday February 20, 2006 at 8:40 am

Orders/Information:

Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah by Tom Chaffin. Hill and Wang hardcover $25.00. ISBN 0809095114.