alternatehistory.com

24 August

HMS Glatton was discovered to be somewhat rotten when she was being prepared for potential service in the Americas; however, the requirements of the war prevented anything being done about it until July.
As orders were being cut for her breaking up given that the pace of war had slowed, someone (history does not record his identity, but Reed is considered a possible source) suggested using her for fort and naval gun testing against a real target - it has become clear that no systematic treatment of the subject yet existing is adequate to explain combat data from America.

The conversion required for this role is now complete, with a sturdy tow cable fitted nearly two miles in length (to allow a tug to tow her from well outside the danger zone) and much flammable material removed, and the spaces below the waterline packed with cork.
This experiment has interesting results. Some old assumptions are confirmed - that stationary ships must be at anchor to provide a stable firing platform, that a mobile ship is hard to hit from shore at a distance - but one possibly surprising detail is that a steady gun platform can allow rifles to hit with reasonable accuracy at a very long range; indeed, a longer range than any gun currently in service can penetrate the sides of even an old ironclad like Glatton (though once Palliser's Temperature Compensations are worked out it will be debated whether a full-charge 68-lber's penetration distance is more or less than its effective range, as the numbers are close to the critical point and it turns on the quality of the 4" armour plate struck). Plunging fire is a little more effective, though the extremely long range (and hence flight time) required to make a shot plunge given modern guns means that it is quite inaccurate.

Glatton survives these first tests, partly due to the removal of the charge from any Palliser shells fired meaning that nothing set her ablaze, though the shock has still caused significant damage to the rotten sections of her timbers.

25 August

Albert Pike successfully secures 5,000 Enfield rifles from the arsenals of the Confederacy for the militias of the Five Civilized Tribes. Part of the quid pro quo involved is that these Enfield rifles will be used for marksmanship training, and that the Civilized Tribes will each be able to furnish 1,000 foot or mounted riflemen for inspection each year. (Another part, due to the slightly odd nature of the Confederate House of Representatives, is that the Indian Representative lends his vote to the passage of four other bills - including one on subsidy of dredging for the mouth of the Mississippi.)
Pike also siphons off some funds from official military use in order to pay the arrears of the Indians who fought for the Confederacy west of the Mississippi, in a move which is probably illegal but which does earn him considerable credit with the tribes of the Indian Territory.
It is about this time that he writes a pamphlet which extolls the virtues of the Indian lifestyle and specifically its provision for natural training in marksmanship, horse riding, and fieldcraft.
Perhaps Pike's greatest rhetorical flourish during this period of Indian advocacy is that he heavily emphasizes the Union's treatment of the Indians (repeatedly breaking treaties) as being "another example of Yankee perfidy" - faced with such a description, Confederate attitudes tend to evolve to be the opposite! (The contradiction with the doctrine of white supremacy is studiously unexamined - "Red" seems to slot somewhere a little between "White" and "French" on the Confederate scale, well above "Yankee".)