The English ship the  Sea King, whose captain luckily has a commission to sell his boat to whoever has ready money, meets another ship, the Laurel, possessed of  much money, off the shores of Los Desertos, isolated islands in the Maderias no doubt chosen because both ships have nothing whatever to hide, Officer. After a transaction involving said money, two days later the Sea King becomes the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate warship commissioned to sail the seven seas in search of booty. The previous career of the Shenandoah’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Whittle, is also profiled, but Robert and Michael seem to have run out of fake beard jokes for the time being.

In the traditional ‘difficult second podcast’, the Sea King (soon to be CSS Shenandoah) and the Laurel (containing the men and munitions) steam towards the Madeira islands (far) off the coast of Africa. This episode discusses the glorious and eventually sad fates of two of the Shenandoah’s predecessors, the Alabama and the Florida, and the career up to the taking up of his command of the soon to be Captain Waddell. In addition to this there is of course further discussion of Civil War movie beards, including the Civil war links between Bruce Boxleitner’s roles in Gods and Generals and Babylon Five.

Join Robert Love and Michael O’Brien as they Live podcast the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the kinda epic kinda comic voyage of the CSS Shenandoah, the only confederate ship to sail around the world . This first episode introduces the the background to the voyage, and  discusses the prevalence or otherwise of Civil War anniversary commemorations. The badness of civil war movie fake beards, is, of course, a major theme.