Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History (46 page)

25
.
OR
, series 1, vol. 29, part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1881), 226. At this time, Meade’s Army of the Potomac consisted of the I, II, III, and V Corps. The XI and XII Corps had already been detached for service in the relief of Chattanooga and then diverted to form the Army of the Hudson. The VI Corps had been detached for the relief of Portland. Counting cavalry and artillery also sent, that left Meade with barely sixty thousand men.

1
. *“Terrified Refugees Pour Into the City,”
New York Tribune
, October 5, 1863, 1. In the few days since Albany had fallen, more than three hundred river craft had fled to the city loaded with refugees to join the thousands more who came by train or wagon. Mayor George Opdyke rallied the Tammany Hall organization to find accommodations for what was estimated as 120,000 people. He was quoted as saying that “upstate is pouring into the City.”

2
. *Michael R. Flannery, “Meagher’s Defense of the Cold Spring Foundry,”
Journal of the Great War
42 (July 18, 1975): 22.

3
. *“Goddess of Erin Sees Meagher Off at the Docks,”
New York Herald
, October 7, 1863, 4. The story of Libby Meagher at the docks became one of the great legends of New York City. A statue in bronze exists today at the New York Harbor Authority headquarters showing Libby rushing forward with the flag.

4
. *John R. Kennedy,
Meagher of the Sword
(New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1872), 173–76.

5
. *Ibid., 180.

6
. *Arthur C. Wallace,
The Hudson Valley Campaign of 1863
(New York: Wilson & Hurlow, 1949), 129. The enemy detachment consisted of the 3rd Company, Scotts Fusilier Guards, and the 1st Company of the 3rd Battalion Victoria Volunteer Rifles of Montreal.

7
. Mark K. Ragan,
Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), 134–37.

8
. Ian W. Toll,
Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 414.

9
. Often incorrectly referred to as the “Channel Fleet,” the Channel Squadron became a permanent formation in 1858 whose primary mission was to defend the British Isles from the French Navy. London
Times
, April 13, 1858, citing the House of Commons’ Naval Estimates of April 12.

10
. London
Times
, July 8 and 31, 1863. The
Times
listed the following ships: the screw iron frigates HMS
Warrior, Black Prince, Resistance, Defence;
the screw ironclad (over wooden hull) frigate
Royal Oak
; and the wooden screw frigates
Emerald
and
Liverpool
, the latter of which had been sunk in the Battle of Moelfre Bay. J. J. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy From the Fifteenth Century to the Present
(London: Greenhill Books, 2003), 51, 95, 272, 352. Armament of
Black Prince
consisted of ten Armstrong 110-pounders (7-inch), twenty-six 68-pounders, and four Armstrong 70-pounders. The armament of the
Resistance
consisted of seven Armstrong 110-pounders, ten 68-pounders, and two 32-pounders. The
Defence
was similarly armed.

11
. Angus Konstam,
Duel of the Ironclads: USS
Monitor
& CSS
Virginia
at Hampton Roads, 1862
(London: Osprey, 2003), 93

12
. James L. Nelson,
Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac
(New York: William Morrow, 2002), 173.

13
. Eugene B. Canfield, “Civil War Ordnance,”
Dictionary of American Fighting Ships
, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval History Division, 1968), 6, 12.

14
. Vol. 2, Entry 99, Record Group 74, National Archives, cited in Robert J. Schneller, Jr. “‘A State of War Is a Most Unfavorable Period for Experiments’: John A. Dahlgren and U.S. Naval Ordnance Innovation During the American Civil War,” (monograph) U.S. Naval Historical Center; John Dahlgren, “Report to the Navy Department,” November 22, 1862, box 27, Library of Congress.

15
. Robert J. Schneller, Jr.,
A Quest for Glory: A Biography of Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 204, 226.

16
. Robert M. Browning, Jr.,
Success Is All That Was Expected: The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron During the Civil War
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2002), 206.

17
. Schneller, “‘A State of War.’”

18
. William H. Roberts,
USS
New Ironsides
in the Civil War
(Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1999), 70–71.

19
. London
Times
, July 8, 1863. Wainwright’s previous command was the HMS
Shannon
, which steamed in the Second Division.

20
. *Nigel Haythorne, ed.,
The Papers of Adm. Alexander Milne in the American War
(London: Albright & Midgely, 1922), 103–110.

21
. Only the
Powhatan
was a side-wheel ship; the rest were all screw driven.
OR Navies
, series 1, vol. 16,
South Atlantic Blockading Squadron From October
1, 1863 to September 30, 1864
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1902), 7.

22
. *Alfred Thayer Mahan,
Crossing the T at Charleston: Dahlgren and the Revolution in Naval Tactics
(New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1895), 163.

23
.
OR Navies
, series 2, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1921), 7, 113–14.

24
. *Mahan,
Crossing the T
, 166. These gunboats were the
Seneca, Conemaugh, Mahaska, Sonoma, Ottawa, Cimarron, Paul Jones
, and
Unadilla
. The gunboats
Chippewa
and
Nipsic
, Port Royal guardships, were accompanying the three monitors from there. They would add another sixteen IX-inch and nine XI-inch Dahlgren guns to the fight.

25
. Both of the following sources cite the size of the crews by ship. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy
, 51, 95, 272, 352;
http://pdavis.nlMidVicShips.php?page=1
, or Ships of the Mid-Victorian Navy. This website offers a mass of detail, including the size of crews and names of captains. Paul H. Silverstone,
Civil War Navies 1855–1883
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 16.

26
. Thucydides, trans. Richard Crawley,
The Peloponnesian War
(New York: Everyman’s Class Library, 1914).

27
. Alfred Thayer Mahan,
From Sail to Steam
(New York: Harper, 1907), cited in Peter G. Tsouras, ed.,
The Book of Military Quotations
(St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2005), 238.

28
. “The Hellenic Crisis from the Point of View of Constitutional and International Law,”
The American Journal of International Law
11 (1917): 60–61.

29
. *Ulric Dahlgren, ed.,
The Letters of Rear-Admiral John A. Dahlgren
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1885), 335.

30
. *Lafayette A. Rhett,
Beauregard and the Defense of Charleston
(Charleston: Charleston University Press, 1976), 256. It is a major controversy of the war how much effect the entry of Ingraham’s two ironclads would have had on the outcome of this battle.

31
. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy
, 51, 95, 272, 352. The entry for each ship in this source lists the number and type of guns.
http://www.pdavis.nl/ShowBiog/php?id+760
. Chamberlain’s previous command was HMS
Racoon
in the First Division.

32
. *Julian Corbett,
The Battle of the Bar and Its Effect Upon Naval Strategy
(London: Wilson & Sons Ltd, 1896) p. 76.

33
.
OR Navies
, series 2, vol. 1, 51, 104, 159, 172, 234. Silverstone,
Civil War Navies
, 16. The
Wabash
also had a crew of 640, almost 30 percent of Dahlgren’s fighting line strength.

34
. *Mahan,
Crossing the T at Charleston
, 172. Dahlgren’s tactics at Charleston were the beginning of the era in naval history and tactics in which the ability to concentrate a superior weight of firepower on an enemy by sailing perpendicular to his advancing columns became paramount. Corbett,
The Battle of the Bar
, 83–87. The conclusions reached on this battle
by Mahan and Corbett were remarkably similar, and those hoping for a transatlantic duel between naval strategists were to be disappointed.

35
. *Charles H. Moody,
Death of the HMS
St. George
and Death of an Era
(London: Baker & Windemeer, Ltd.), 176.

36
. Colledge,
Ships of the Royal Navy
, 96.

37
. *R. B. Casterbridge, “
Chesapeake
Avenged! The
Atlanta
versus the
Shannon
,”
Journal of Naval History
17 (June 23, 1963): 35.

38
. *Andrew Cochrane,
Sailor of the Queen: The Life of HRH Alfred
(London: Gossett & Sons, Ltd., 1912), 141.

39
. *Ulric Dahlgren,
Victory at Charleston: Admiral Dahlgren and the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron
(Boston: Appleton, 1880), 301–2. Dahlgren’s account is unabashed hero worship of his father both as a naval commander and as a man.

40
. Unidentified newspaper article entitled, “The Warrior,” dated May 11, 1861, found in the Dahlgren Papers, Library of Congress.

41
. *William R. Thomas,
With Colonel Dahlgren and the Marines: Adventures on the
New Ironsides
at the Battle of Charleston
(New York: The Century Company, 1888), 206.

42
. *Ulric Dahlgren, New Ironsides
and
Black Prince:
Duel of the Titans
(New York: The Sheldon Company, 1879) p. 229.

43
. *Wilfred C. Baimbridge,
HMS
Black Prince
at Charleston
(London: Tinsdale & Williams, 1892), 324.

44
. London
Times
, July 8, 1863.

45
. *Mahan,
Crossing the T at Charleston
, 240.

46
. *Aaron C. Davis,
Sinking the
Black Prince
: First Victory of the Submersible Service
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Academy Press, 2004), 192.

47
. *Duncan Ingraham, “The Loss of the
Resistance
in Charleston Harbor,”
Historical Society of the South
4 (January 1876): 83–85. Chance had it that the
Resistance
sank at Ager Dock, which had a depth of twenty-six feet. The ship’s twenty-five-foot draft meant that the ship merely settled on the bottom and did not go under; its upper decks were still above water. Nevertheless, the
Resistance
was out of the war.
http://www.colonialwargames.org.uk/Miscellany/Warships/Ironclads/EIroncladsRN.htm
. The draft of the
Warrior
class (the
Warrior
and
Black Prince
) ships was twenty-six feet and that of the
Defence
class (the
Defence
and
Resistance
) twenty-five feet.

1
. Personnel of the trains were not Maine troops but drawn from the logistics establishment of the Army of the Potomac.

2
. John W. Busey and David G. Martin,
Regimental Strengths and Losses at Gettysburg
(Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1982), 241, 243, 246, 248, 251, 255, 259, 261, 262, 263. The strength of the Maine Division on arrival at Portland is calculated by subtracting Gettysburg losses and then allowing for 50 percent of losses to be returned to duty either through recovery of wounds or missing returning to the ranks.

A former U.S. Army officer, Peter G. Tsouras is an intelligence analyst, a military historian, and the author or editor of two dozen works of military history and alternate history, including
Gettysburg: An Alternate History, Dixie Victorious: An Alternate History of the Civil War, Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944
, and
Military Quotations from the Civil War: In the Words of the Commanders
. Many of his books have been selected by the History Book Club and the Military Book Club as primary selections and have been translated into numerous languages. A regular guest on the History Channel and similar venues in Britain and Canada, Mr. Tsouras is an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.