James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[211] to his hasty departure, and his separation from the rest of his crew, he could not well have known the whole number. Of the seventy prisoners taken by the Kearsarge, three were in a dying condition, and seventeen were wounded. Of the crew of the Kearsarge, three men were wounded by the bursting of a 68-pound shell on the quarter deck, one of whom afterward died. With this exception no one was hurt.

It is commonly supposed that the Alabama's guns were served by seamen-gunners from the Excellent, the gunnery-ship of the English navy. The supposition rests on a statement made soon after the action by a reporter of the London Times, who referred to Semmes as his authority. But Semmes denied the statement explicitly. A large number of his crew were Englishmen, several of whom had served in men-of-war, and a few were Naval Reserve men; but beyond this there seems to have been no foundation for the assertion. If it was true, it certainly did not speak well for the Excellent. Out of three hundred and seventy shot and shell fired by the Alabama, only twenty-eight struck the Kearsarge, of which one-half took effect in the hull. The rest struck the sails, rigging and boats. None of the twenty-eight did any material injury. The hammock-nettings of the Kearsarge were set on fire, but the flames were soon extinguished. One 100-pound shell exploded in the smoke-stack. Another lodged in the stern-post, but fortunately did not explode; which led Semmes to say that the fate of the battle was decided by the defects of a percussion cap. It is not an uncommon foible in beaten commanders to assign these accidental or incidental causes for their defeat, and sometimes with more or less foundation; but in the engagement of the Kearsarge and Alabama, the difference in the efficiency of the crews was too marked to admit this as in any sense an explanation. Moreover, the shell was fired in the latter part of the action,