By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

The Civil War came perilously close to the Vineyard in 1863 and 1864, when Confederate raiders sank fishing boats and schooners all around the Island.

James B. (Jim) Richardson 3rd of Oak Bluffs, a respected historian, told tales about the raiders in a talk at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum titled The Civil War Comes to New England: Confederate Raiders by Land and Sea.

Mr. Richardson spoke about many ships, and many notoriously risky officers of the Confederate Navy, who did what they could to shake the Union’s strength. He recounted the story of five Confederate raiders sinking as many as 67 vessels, including three ships that came close to the Vineyard. Others terrorized the indefensible whaling fleet traveling the Atlantic and well across the Pacific.

Mr. Richardson is a familiar face at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, where for many years he has served on the board of directors. He is curator emeritus with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. An archaeologist, he has conducted digs as near as the Vineyard and as far away as Peru.

His talk last week was part of an ongoing program at the museum on the Civil War and its impact on the Vineyard community.

The years 1863 to 1864 were especially tough years here, he said. With Confederates all around, there was not a single person on the Vineyard who did not have a concern for a loved one, relative or friend at sea, whether they worked in fishing boats offshore or in whaleships circling the globe. The Confederate raiders were out to destroy the commerce of the North and their perceived threat loomed large.

Mr. Richardson said: “Look in the Vineyard Gazette of that period. There are constant alarms about what was happening. The Gazette reported news from letters, and newspapers on the mainland, from New Bedford and New York. There was the concern that if anyone of those raiders pulled into Vineyard Haven, the Vineyard residents were powerless against them.”

In 1863 Charles W. Read terrorized the fishing fleet and commercial merchant vessels east of Nantucket. He captained three different vessels, moving from one to the other, to expand his authority. He started with the Clarence, moved to the Tacony and finally took over the local fishing vessel Archer, which he captured just off Nantucket. In the span of a month he sank 22 commercial vessels and passenger ships in the area. On June 22 and 23 he sank eight fishing schooners off Nantucket.

The Confederate State steamer Tallahassee, a 220-foot iron steamer with sails, moved into the waters around the Island in August 1864. While on a run from Wilmington, N.C., to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in seven days they burned 33 ships, most between the Vineyard and New York. The commander was John Taylor Wood, a grandson of President Zachary Taylor and a nephew of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States. While en route the Tallahassee sank a number of fishing boats just off Nantucket.

The third vessel was the CSS Chickamauga, which in the fall of 1864 did a cruise north to the entrance of Long Island Sound. “She got right off of the Vineyard,” Mr. Richardson said. In that trip she ruined seven ships in five days, under the command of Lieut. John Wilkinson.

In the Atlantic and in the Pacific there were two other raiders, far more notorious — the Alabama and the Shenandoah.

Mr. Richardson spoke about the 220-foot Alabama under the command of Raphael Semmes. On Sept. 5, 1862, off the Azores, the ship took possession of its first whaling ship, the Edgartown-based Ocmulgee, captained by Abraham Osborn. The ship was boarded, seized and the next day burned and sunk. One angle to the story, Mr. Richardson said, begged for more research: Raphael Semmes may have known Edgartown and the whaling captain, because of his prior work with lighthouses.

Captain Semmes was responsible for sinking many Yankee ships during the war, and not only while in command of the Alabama.

A second raider was the 230-foot Shenandoah, captained by James Waddell. She traveled across the Pacific and is known to have sunk four whaleships in one day, on April 3, 1865: the Edward Cury of San Francisco, the Hector of Honolulu, the Harvest of New Bedford and the Pearl of New London.

Mr. Richardson said Shenandoah sank 47 whaleships in the span of just two months. “Their goal was to knock out the whaling industry,” he said. The Confederate raider continued to sink whaleships for two months after the war had ended.

Mr. Richardson said the raiding stopped only when someone showed the Shenandoah captain a newspaper article stating that the war had ended and the Confederate army had surrendered. In response, Captain Waddell threw the ship’s guns overboard and sailed her to Liverpool to surrender.

And the Confederate raiders were not just out to raise havoc by sinking ships; their secondary goal was to distract Union ships. “They were trying to pull the federal Navy from blockading the southern ports. It worked,” Mr. Richardson said.

To complete his storytelling, Mr. Richardson told the audience that the cannon that sits at the entrance to the Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven has a Civil War history. The cannon, No. 44, weighing 9,104 pounds, served on the U.S.S. Wabash beginning in April 1863, he said. The cannon was made at the Tredegar Foundary in 1855. After the war, it was turned over to the Boston Navy Yard in April 1874, later named the Charlestown Navy Yard, where it resided for less than a century.

Robert Douglas, owner of the Black Dog Tavern, purchased the cannon in 1971 from a Blue Hill yard that took possession of many items from the Charlestown Navy Yard, Mr. Richardson said.

He also said Mr. Douglas’s schooners Alabama and Shenandoah have no link to the Confederate raiders. Mr. Richardson said Mr. Douglas liked the name Shenandoah. And the 90-foot Alabama was a pilot schooner from Mobile, Ala., built in 1926 and that happened to be her name.