The complete crew list of the CSS Alabama included in William Marvel's volume, "The Alabama and the Kearsarge: The Sailor's Civil War," was not the contribution of one person, as a certain Englishman (whom I shall refer to as X) likes to constantly claim, but is mostly data obtained from a number of sources, including the works listed in Marvel's bibliography. A check of several of these sources clearly shows that the data was from these works for almost all of the crew listed in the volume. I admit that X had made some contributions to this data, but only in a few cases (perhaps as little as ten percent or less), and only for data concerning birth and death information, and even in this respect, nearly all the data for the officers was definitely obtained from published sources as shown in the bibliography, and not from X. Furthermore, some of this information from X, as included in the crew list, is incorrect and misleading, as he himself has admitted (see in particular, the information for Michael Mars and Clarence Randolph Yonge).
Much of the data for the crew as shown at Marvel's list, is very basic information, and this very basic information is included in the Naval Official Records (see especially volume 3, which shows the names of many crew members, their ratings, and subsequent fate, after the sinking of the cruiser, off Cherbourg), the Alabama Claims volumes (which includes data on where the mainly English personnel came from, including cities and towns), and Arthur Sinclair's own account. Besides these particular sources, there are numerous other volumes which include additional data, such as the Fullam account and even Hoole's biography of John Low. I have been told that X had tried to claim credit for information on Low. He must think we are all ignorant of the facts. I have always insisted that his claims for full credit of the data on the CSS Alabama crew, as shown in Marvel's volume was rather suspect, and I will now concentrate on an article showing all the evidence against his claims (with sources shown directly).
My advice to one and all, is that if anyone makes such claims, it is always best to investigate further, before accepting their claims.
X has constantly impugned the name of Marvel, by trying to constantly claim full credit for all the data of the CSS Alabama crew as shown in Marvel's publication, yet Marvel was correct all along in not giving him full credit for all this data. It is very sad indeed, that many people have been fooled by these false claims.