alternatehistory.com

26 September

The HMS Hector goes on sea trials.
She is generally viewed as a slight improvement on the Defence class - her broadside is considerably better than these ships, and she has a complete waterline belt, but she is still not so fast as the larger Warrior and does not compare so favourably to potential enemy ironclads.
The HMS Taurus - a Zodiac-class ironclad - is approved by the Admiralty for purchase by the Bakfu government of Japan. The cost assigned to the sale is considerably more than the cost of the actual ironclad, and in fact would pay for roughly a quarter of the Zodiac program.
The final sale is pending inspection by a trusted retainer of the Japanese Shogun.


29 September

At a meeting in Virginia, Robert E. Lee addresses a large crowd - many of them soldiers or ex-soldiers and more than a few of them men who served under him.
The reaction is generally quite positive.


3 October
A committee on defence determines that the 13 inch Horsfall Gun should be shipped to Pearl Harbour, along with a number of 9.2" Somerset guns. It is also decided that, in light of the mixed effectiveness of submarine explosives in the recent war, the Admiralty should endeavour to develop further both methods of placing explosives, methods of correctly triggering explosives and methods of removing emplaced explosives.
A plan to send a Mallet's Mortar to Pearl is denied, though the decision is made in the affirmative to ship a supply of iron and sufficient furnaces to allow for Martin's Shell fire - on the grounds that most ships that might attack Hawai'i would be wooden or composite construction rather than all-iron or ironclad.


8th October

An offer is made to the Sejm by the Russian government, outlining a set of guarantees of protection for Polish culture and citizens and a separate-but-equal status within the Russian Empire.
Unfortunately, due to a series of mistakes in St. Petersburg the text of the offer is word-for-word identical in many places to the 1815 Constitution. This results in widespread incredulity, followed by anger - the 1815 Constitution is widely viewed in Poland and elsewhere as a deliberate sop which was never fulfilled, and the reminder is distinctly untactful.

Three heavy Krupp rifles (nominally 24 pounders, though their shell weights are rather greater) are smuggled over the border between Moravia and Poland. Their initial source is hard to tell - their serial numbers have all been carefully filed off - and they are christened Sigismund, Wladyslaw and Hedwig by the picked Uhlan (artillerist) company which takes charge of them.