Much as we may think that the Civil War's outcome was determined by a series of cataclysmic land battles, another war unfolded along clandestine lines, with Great Britain playing a powerful role. By leaking information about Anglo-American communications to Confederate agents abroad, Foreign Office clerk Victor Buckley saved the Alabama from being saved by the British, freeing it to deliver supplies to the South. As Renata Eley Long recounts, Buckley's tale was far from done, and his story eventually encompasses Queen Victoria, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Masons.