Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship

John Baldwin · Ron Powers

May 2007 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Ron McLarty

About this audiobook

As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to shatter the U.S. economy and force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to prowl the world’s oceans and sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider’s name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a twenty-four-year-old warrior who might have stepped from the pages of Arthurian legend. Whittle would share command with a dark and brooding veteran of the seas, Capt. James Waddell, and together with a crew of strays, misfits, and strangers, they would spend nearly a year sailing two-thirds of the way around the globe, destroying dozens of Union ships and taking more than a thousand prisoners, all while continually dodging the enemy.Then, in August of 1865, a British ship revealed the shocking truth to the men of Shenandoah: The war had been over for months, and they were now being hunted as pirates. What ensued was an incredible 15,000-mile journey to the one place the crew hoped to find sanctuary, only to discover that their fate would depend on how they answered a single question. Wondrously evocative and filled with drama and poignancy, Last Flag Down is a riveting story of courage, nobility, and rare comradeship forged in the quest to achieve the impossible.

About the author

John Baldwin is a magazine writer, lecturer, and the author of the novels Last Flag Down: The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship (with Ron Powers) and Ice Pick. 

Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He is the author of White Town Drowsing and Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. He lives in Vermont.

Ron McLarty graduated from Rhode Island College in 1969, and started his theatre career shortly thereafter. A well known Broadway and TV actor, he is one of also the country’s leading audiobook narrators, having done over 100 titles, including the narration of books authored by Stephen King, Danielle Steel, Richard Russo, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, David Baldacci, Scott Turow, and George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points. McLarty has also written his own books, among them the novels Traveler, The Memory of Running, and Art in America.