Anglo-American Wars of the 19th Century

EC, TFS121 - as the reigning experts on the Trent War in these forums and the local equivalent of the Lion & the Unicorn (honestly, you make Gladstone and Disraeli look like the Tom and Jerry!*), might one ask if you have ever considered working out a Wargame that would allow you to pursue your purely-Academic debates down a more entertaining avenue?

I'm not arrogant enough to think this will actually SETTLE your disagreement (and as a sometime Academic myself I know that a good dispute is the very life-blood of Historical scholarship, preventing it from becoming a mere dry & dusty assertion of dogma), but I honestly want to see what the two of you could come up with if your scholarships combined in the noble cause of Fun!:D

After all, wouldn't it be more Sporting to hazard a little pride and put your theories into practice at the mercy of Dame Fortune than to perpetually agree to disagree?

I have played a lot of the old table top (commercial) wargames since the 1970s but I don't recall a Trent War scenario in any of them on an operational or strategic scale. There were rules in the old Yaquinto game "Ironclads" that allowed you to introduce British warships into a scenario (possibly French too) but I can't be sure as I haven't seen the game since 1981. I suspect any naval miniatures rules covering that era would allow scenario building to at least cover ship to ship actions.

In terms of wargaming ground combat I feel reasonably confident that miniature rules would allow tactical combat in many of the various rules that are out there. Nice thing about those kind of rules sets, if you don't want to invest in the models, cardboard counters work just fine.

I am not aware of any computer games out there with this option. The closest might be "Operational Art of War" (which I play a lot) which has scenario building rules and has a scenario to play the Great War from Turtledoves universe. It works less well with 19th Century combat however.

So bottom line, probably would require designing something.
 
What article? His links don't go to anything approximating analysis.

Best,

Now I know this is going to be fruitless and any response eminently predictable.


However ...
First allow me to admonish you on your abominable netiquette.
An enquiry was made by another poster to me (not you) asking about a post I made. Instead of having the courtesy of allowing me to respond in a timely, and hopefully relevant, concise and accurate, way you imposed yourself in an offensive fashion denigrating any response I might make and dismissing any value or content of the article in question.
Without even reading it and somehow ignoring what you were informed about its origin.

Which, just to be clear, is this https://news.usni.org/2016/04/06/survey-results-what-is-the-greatest-warship-of-all-time produced by the US Naval Institute, an organisation based on the grounds of the Annapolis Naval Academy and who's list of members would include multiple former Presidents and Chairmans of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
You are effectively dismissing this entire body and declaring its work irrelevant?

Furthermore ...

This was the point to the early part of the post, about which the enquiry was made, was trying to make, which was to make it clear about the source of the relevant article. And thus to allow viewers to be clear on context and validity. An instution who's first President was John Worden (Captain of USS Monitor) and membership has included Thomas Edison, William Halsey, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt and Colin Powell may have something useful to say.
Not everyone the board was necessarily aware of this and I was trying to be clear, by providing links to sites explaining this.

As to the actually relevant article, from a book published by the USNI press, about which you seem to think a spelling mistake by someone else
is grounds for disregarding. It quite clearly says that the US was worried about European intervention and took preparatory steps. That even at its height the Union Navy was no larger than the French and its material was inferior. It lists the state of the US Navy in 1861, NOT just European Navies.
And is very clear on the state of the comparative imbalance of forces compared to the Royal Navy.
You have refuted none of this. And even if you disagree with the conclusion from the evidence than the US Navy "was in deep trouble" that is no license for insult.

You Sir are not a Civilised Gentleman and I decline to have any more to do with you.

Good Day to all.
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
No, I belong to the USNI, and they even paid me for a piece once...

As to the actually relevant article, from a book published by the USNI press, about which you seem to think a spelling mistake by someone else is grounds for disregarding. It quite clearly says that the US was worried about European intervention and took preparatory steps. That even at its height the Union Navy was no larger than the French and its material was inferior. It lists the state of the US Navy in 1861, NOT just European Navies. And is very clear on the state of the comparative imbalance of forces compared to the Royal Navy. You have refuted none of this. And even if you disagree with the conclusion from the evidence than the US Navy "was in deep trouble" that is no license for insult. You Sir are not a Civilised Gentleman and I decline to have any more to do with you. Good Day to all.

No, I belong to the USNI, and they even paid me for a piece once... I did ask what the point of the post was and you didn't respond.

Anyway, there's nothing in the "final" link beyond a ship list; there's no analysis of what those ships were supposed to accomplish, how the enemy would be likely to respond, or anything else approximating analysis.

Which, given that this is all supposed to happen in a perod where sea power was, to be charitable, of negligble influence in conflicts between continental powers - as per Palmerston's quote in 1864 that "Ships sailing on the sea cannot stop armies on land" makes clear - much less the histories of the Russian War of 1854-56, the various German/ Danish/ Austrian/ Italian/ French wars in 1864-71, the US Civil War of 1861-65, the Franco-Mexican war of 1861-67, or the Spanish wars with the Dominicans, Peruvians, and Chileans in the 1860s.

Indeed, I am not a "civilized gentleman," sir. I come from a long line of Americans.;)

Best,
 
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As to the actually relevant article, from a book published by the USNI press, about which you seem to think a spelling mistake by someone else
is grounds for disregarding. It quite clearly says that the US was worried about European intervention and took preparatory steps. That even at its height the Union Navy was no larger than the French and its material was inferior. It lists the state of the US Navy in 1861, NOT just European Navies.
And is very clear on the state of the comparative imbalance of forces compared to the Royal Navy.
You have refuted none of this. And even if you disagree with the conclusion from the evidence than the US Navy "was in deep trouble" that is no license for insult.
.

to be fair your initial post did not link directly to the article and most of us are well aware of the qualifications of Naval Institute Press... I spent a lot of high school in 1970s reading the world class Blue Books (official US Navy history of World War 2). The magazine is very good as well, although it does run articles that are designed to establish a debate and are not in the themselves authoritative. Also while "Hunt for Red October" is an oustanding novel, even though it was published by the Naval Institute Press it is still fiction.

The article cited was from the book "Mr Lincoln's Navy" which I haven't read yet although it is on my list of books to get (my Amazon list never seems to shrink, it merely sees some changes)

While it lists warships, and a conclusion by that particular books author, it is not in itself conclusive. Nor is it representative of the opinions of everyone who you cited as to my knowledge none of them have expressed an opinion in print on this matter.

So it (the article) shouldn't be dismissed, but it is also not as solid as you are assuming.

Counting ships is never a good indication of relative naval strength. It is an indicator, but more important are the missions the fleets in question must accomplish, and whether they have the logistical support to accomplish those as well as deal with their other missions. The Royal Navy had the overall mission in the 19th Century of dominating all of the oceans of the world to protect British trade. Fisher realized that such a mission was impossible and according to Kennedy's book "The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery" which I have cited before, the RN and British government had already realized as early as the 1850s that a full scale war with the Americans would make that overall mission extremely difficult and perhaps impossible.

Which of course colored British diplomacy from the 1820s on

Whether "Mr Lincolns Navy" is a good book or not I don't know, as I haven't read it yet. But unless that issue is addressed, the authors opinion on whether the British Navy could accomplish the missions needed to defeat the United States in a prolonged war is questionable.

The RN can do this much... it can end the Blockade of the South just because it exists and is a presence, and thus forces the US Navy to pull back north or scatter as commerce raiders. That is a major assist to the South. Whether that is going to be enough for the North to give up on the idea of the United States consisting of all of the States as of 1859 is something that can be argued and should be debated.

Any other missions, such as quoted in another thread on this forum like attack successfully and destroyed the fortified (heavily) ports held by the Union seems unlikely to me for reasons I listed in this post and TFSmith expanded on

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=12337946&postcount=105

The Royal Navy is well aware of the risks of attacking fortified ports,which is why it rarely did so in its history
 
(my Amazon list never seems to shrink, it merely sees some changes)

A problem I seem to share, maybe it's an organizational thing :p

The Royal Navy is well aware of the risks of attacking fortified ports,which is why it rarely did so in its history

There certainly seems to have been a lack of consensus on the matter. I just read Clad in Iron by Fuller recently and he certainly makes a number of interesting points. One big proponent of the ability for the RN was a certain Cowper Coles who was probably the leading proponent of turret ships in the RN prior to the ACW. Granted his beliefs were colored by his experiences at Kinburn, but it seems that the Admiralty could not agree on whether these lessons were instructional or not. Certainly there was a great debate over what type of ironclad vessels should be employed, whether these be steam batteries or armored ships of the line, and even the planners of the hypothetical Trent war plans were almost to a man adamantly opposed to assaults on defended ports.

On the flip side though, Fuller points out that at the outset of the Trent affair the Union was paradoxically vulnerable to a sudden descent by British naval power, this based on the opinion of Scientific American writing articles in the aftermath of the whole affair, and by a Congressional report on the state of the coastal defenses in April 1862, all of which concluded they were in fact not prepared for such an event (which Fuller seems to agree with). The cabinet itself was certainly not sanguine about the prospects of British intervention.

Unhelpfully the historical record on the issue is also mixed. The Royal Navy had no problem bringing ruin to forts like Bomarsund, Sveaborg, and Kinburn, but was strangely adverse to assaulting Sevastopol and Kronstadt. On the flip side the Union was immensely successful in its campaigns against New Orleans and Mobile, but despite their best efforts were stymied for years against Charleston and Wilmington.

I'm not sure if The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery addresses any of this in full, but it is something I need to take a good look at as a counterpoint to Fuller.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The Allies bombarded Sveaborg 9-10 August 1855

On the flip side though, Fuller points out that at the outset of the Trent affair the Union was paradoxically vulnerable to a sudden descent by British naval power, this based on the opinion of Scientific American writing articles in the aftermath of the whole affair, and by a Congressional report on the state of the coastal defenses in April 1862, all of which concluded they were in fact not prepared for such an event (which Fuller seems to agree with). The cabinet itself was certainly not sanguine about the prospects of British intervention.

Unhelpfully the historical record on the issue is also mixed. The Royal Navy had no problem bringing ruin to forts like Bomarsund, Sveaborg, and Kinburn, but was strangely adverse to assaulting Sevastopol and Kronstadt. On the flip side the Union was immensely successful in its campaigns against New Orleans and Mobile, but despite their best efforts were stymied for years against Charleston and Wilmington.

I'm not sure if The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery addresses any of this in full, but it is something I need to take a good look at as a counterpoint to Fuller.

The Allies bombarded Sveaborg 9-10 August 1855 (more than a year after the war began, of course, so the "sudden descent" idea needs some context) and yet the Russians did not surrender and the RN and French left after two days.

Not exactly Fort Donelson.

Best,
 
A problem I seem to share, maybe it's an organizational thing :p



There certainly seems to have been a lack of consensus on the matter. I just read Clad in Iron by Fuller recently and he certainly makes a number of interesting points. One big proponent of the ability for the RN was a certain Cowper Coles who was probably the leading proponent of turret ships in the RN prior to the ACW. Granted his beliefs were colored by his experiences at Kinburn, but it seems that the Admiralty could not agree on whether these lessons were instructional or not. Certainly there was a great debate over what type of ironclad vessels should be employed, whether these be steam batteries or armored ships of the line, and even the planners of the hypothetical Trent war plans were almost to a man adamantly opposed to assaults on defended ports.

On the flip side though, Fuller points out that at the outset of the Trent affair the Union was paradoxically vulnerable to a sudden descent by British naval power, this based on the opinion of Scientific American writing articles in the aftermath of the whole affair, and by a Congressional report on the state of the coastal defenses in April 1862, all of which concluded they were in fact not prepared for such an event (which Fuller seems to agree with). The cabinet itself was certainly not sanguine about the prospects of British intervention.

Unhelpfully the historical record on the issue is also mixed. The Royal Navy had no problem bringing ruin to forts like Bomarsund, Sveaborg, and Kinburn, but was strangely adverse to assaulting Sevastopol and Kronstadt. On the flip side the Union was immensely successful in its campaigns against New Orleans and Mobile, but despite their best efforts were stymied for years against Charleston and Wilmington.

I'm not sure if The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery addresses any of this in full, but it is something I need to take a good look at as a counterpoint to Fuller.

The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery is more about policy than details, but the Trent War is addressed (and so the 1895 Venezuela Crisis). I will have to dig it back up out of storage (maybe tomorrow as today is a thunderstorm day) as I put it there after I read it

My point though is that neither side has any reason to be sanguine about their chances in the Trent War scenario and both sides knew it and acted accordingly hence no actual Trent War.

There is a lot of bluster that turns up on these threads but it should be noted that the actual players of the day were pretty careful about their diplomacy with each other.
 
The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery is more about policy than details, but the Trent War is addressed (and so the 1895 Venezuela Crisis). I will have to dig it back up out of storage (maybe tomorrow as today is a thunderstorm day) as I put it there after I read it

My point though is that neither side has any reason to be sanguine about their chances in the Trent War scenario and both sides knew it and acted accordingly hence no actual Trent War.

There is a lot of bluster that turns up on these threads but it should be noted that the actual players of the day were pretty careful about their diplomacy with each other.

Certainly true. Policy and perception is often overlooked in favor of bluster as well.
 
In the long run War may be a numbers game, but it must still be won by rolling the dice - and sometimes your numbers just don't come up (I'd argue that the American Civil War might be the most perfect proof of this; by almost every measure the CSA was a welterweight to the Northern Heavyweight, yet they still managed to throw the Federals more than once).

I admit that part of the reason I suggested not-entirely-seriously that you gentlemen might like to wargame a Trent War in the manner of the "Shared Worlds" sub-forum* was that I am more than a little entranced by the prospect of rolling dice to lend a sort of "organic uncertainty" to working out just what happens next when there are multiple outcomes possible and few certainties (for example when two roughly equal forces confront one another in the field of war).

I hope you will pardon my eccentricity intruding upon your scholarship!:D

*Not as a way of resolving your academic debate once and for all, but simply to pool your expertise for the amusement of the audience and thereby combine your powers FOR GREAT JUSTICE! … or something like that.


Now, having taken a look at the theories and the evidence in support advanced by you gentlemen, I think we can say only one thing for certain about a Trent War - that only the Confederate States of America would win such a conflict (even if only in the short term).

One can only imagine the imp of hilarity and the unholy satisfaction that might be loosed in the Slaveocracy when twin pillars of Abolition such as the Free North and the United Kingdom went to war - it is a thought so awful that I feel moved to ask "Could the United Kingdom have been persuaded to actively support the United States against the Southern Confederacy?"

I have to admit that the mental image of Dixie getting a right Royal kicking to go with the Republican hammering it received in our own timeline seems to me a most delightful prospect … but is it even vaguely possible that something like this might have happened?
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Well, except that while chance has a role in warfare, probability

In the long run War may be a numbers game, but it must still be won by rolling the dice - and sometimes your numbers just don't come up (I'd argue that the American Civil War might be the most perfect proof of this; by almost every measure the CSA was a welterweight to the Northern Heavyweight, yet they still managed to throw the Federals more than once).

I admit that part of the reason I suggested not-entirely-seriously that you gentlemen might like to wargame a Trent War in the manner of the "Shared Worlds" sub-forum* was that I am more than a little entranced by the prospect of rolling dice to lend a sort of "organic uncertainty" to working out just what happens next when there are multiple outcomes possible and few certainties (for example when two roughly equal forces confront one another in the field of war).

I hope you will pardon my eccentricity intruding upon your scholarship!:D

Now, having taken a look at the theories and the evidence in support advanced by you gentlemen, I think we can say only one thing for certain about a Trent War - that only the Confederate States of America would win such a conflict (even if only in the short term).

One can only imagine the imp of hilarity and the unholy satisfaction that might be loosed in the Slaveocracy when twin pillars of Abolition such as the Free North and the United Kingdom went to war - it is a thought so awful that I feel moved to ask "Could the United Kingdom have been persuaded to actively support the United States against the Southern Confederacy?"

I have to admit that the mental image of Dixie getting a right Royal kicking to go with the Republican hammering it received in our own timeline seems to me a most delightful prospect … but is it even vaguely possible that something like this might have happened?

Well, except that while chance has a role in warfare, probability is more of a factor, and as a certain warlord said once upon a time, quantity has a quality all of its own.

Or as another one said, God is on the side of the big battalions.;)

As in the Civil War (historically); both the rebels and the US spent most of 1861 mobilizing, but by the end of the year on some fronts, and indeed on all fronts by 1862, the US was successfully mounting offensives and liberating/retaking territory and population from Virginia to Texas, and continued to do so through to (obviously) the end. The rebels lost on every front, and repeatedly; they occasionally scored a battlefield victory, but they never took back any significant territory and were losing resources almost from day one.

Not an intrusion at all; I certainly appreciate it in regards to BROS.

As far as British intervention against the rebellion, well, simply not being a major source of ordnance supply for the rebel armed forces would have been a nice beginning.:rolleyes:

But given the realities of the war as an internal conflict, even if the British had offered anything more than truly acting as a neutral, Lincoln et al would have said thanks, but no thanks. It was, after all, an American conflict, to be resolved by Americans, even if - for example:

"...if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The above is not mere rhetoric; any reasonable study of the beliefs and themes of the time - Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, for example - makes it clear how deeply the belief that faith and a belief in Providence was, in fact, an active element of the intellectual and emotional lives of the participants, much more so then in later conflicts.

One of the aspects of the Civil War that a lot of present-day observers have difficulties following, I think, is how much it was a revolutionary conflict, both in terms of the truly religious framing of the struggle by both sides and how deeply vested the combatants were in the conflict as a cause. It was very much a Millenialist perspective, and given the weight of the New England and New York religious and theological/philosophical communities and tradition on the American cause, not to be underestimated.

triumphlg.jpg


It was, to a very real degree, both a people's war and a religious one, not in terms of questions of faith, per se, but in questions of belief, about what was morally right, which was a foundational element both to the abolitionists and the "Unionist" cause, as Gary Gallagher makes clear in The Union War ... it was, in many ways, the last truly "Christian" crusade, much more so even than the Great War or the Second World War.

And, with all due respect to the CofE as a mainspring of muscular Christianity, one would have to place the weight of such faith on the "American" side in such a conflict in the 1860s.;)

More seriously, good piece on northern views of the conflict in religious terms:

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwnorth.htm

Cheap cotton and European power politics wouldn't seem to have had quite the same ideological power.

Best,
 
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Well, except that while chance has a role in warfare, probability is more of a factor, and as a certain warlord said once upon a time, quantity has a quality all of its own.

Or as another one said, God is on the side of the big battalions.;)

As in the Civil War (historically); both the rebels and the US spent most of 1861 mobilizing, but by the end of the year on some fronts, and indeed on all fronts by 1862, the US was successfully mounting offensives and liberating/retaking territory and population from Virginia to Texas, and continued to do so through to (obvously) the end. The rebels lost on every front, and repeatedly; they occasionally scored a battlefield victory, but they never took back any significant territory and were losing resources almost from day one.

Not an intrusion at all; I certainly appreciate it in regards to BROS.

As far as British intervention against the rebellion, well, simply not being a major source of ordnance supply for the rebel armed forces would have been a nice beginning.:rolleyes:

But given the realities of the war as an internal conflict, even if the British had offered anything more than truly acting as a neutral, Lincoln et al would have said thanks, but no thanks. It was, after all, an American conflict, to be resolved by Americans, even if - for example:

"...if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The above is not mere rhetoric; any reasonable study of the beliefs and themes of the time - Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering, for example - makes it clear how deeply the belief that faith and a belief in Providence was, in fact, an active element of the intellectual and emotional lives of the participants, much more so then in later conflicts.

One of the aspects of the Civil War that a lot of present-day observers have difficulties following, I think, is how much it was a revolutionary conflict, both in terms of the truly religious framing of the struggle by both sides and how deeply vested the combatants were in the conflict as a cause. It was very much a Millenialist perspective, and given the weight of the New England and New York religious and theological/philosophical communities and tradition on the American cause, not to be underestimated.

triumphlg.jpg


It was, to a very real degree, both a people's war and a religious one, not in terms of questions of faith, per se, but in questions of belief, about what was morally right, which was a foundational element both to the abolitionists and the "Unionist" cause, as Gary Gallagher makes clear in The Union War ... it was, in many ways, the last truly "Christian" crusade, much more so even than the Great War or the Second World War.

And, with all due respect to the CofE as a mainspring of muscular Christianity, one would have to place the weight of such faith on the "American" side in such a conflict in the 1860s.;)

More seriously, good piece on northern views of the conflict in religious terms:

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/cwnorth.htm

Cheap cotton and European power politics wouldn't seem to have had quite the same ideological power.

Best,

the discouraging part of that is that many in the South (not all by any means but a majority and the loud one at that) thought it was their religious duty to keep Black people as slaves for their "own good". There were some voices still in the North saying similar things but very few by the 1850s.

There is a depressing amount of literature from that era saying just that, not to mention speeches in Congress and Statehouses
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Very true

the discouraging part of that is that many in the South (not all by any means but a majority and the loud one at that) thought it was their religious duty to keep Black people as slaves for their "own good". There were some voices still in the North saying similar things but very few by the 1850s. There is a depressing amount of literature from that era saying just that, not to mention speeches in Congress and Statehouses

Very true; as Lincoln said:

"... One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.

To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"

Have a really hard time seeing, for example, Mr. Temple describing a British war in North America in the same period in quite the same terms, especially given that - in such a war - the British would be fighting alongside the side that had chosen war over peace had done so in order to maintain chattel slavery.

Best,
 
I'm not sure if I've typed this here before, but I would just like to say that so Help Me God I haven't been able to swallow pro-Southern rhetoric since … well it's been a while; while I can feel pity for the Southerners who got caught up in its death-throes, you will find nothing remotely resembling pity for the Confederate States in my heart.

Bad Cess to them and God have mercy on the souls of men misguided enough to fight for the right to keep Human souls as property & use them as chattel (especially in an Age when technology increasingly offered the prospect of machines to do the drudge work, despite the new problems the Industrial Age unleashed upon Society).


On a note slightly less likely preaching to the Choir, might one ask you gentleman just what sort of role the British West Indies might have played in an Anglo-American fracas sometime in the first half of the 19th Century? (Would any voices in Congress have seriously advocated seizing them from the British in the interests of removing Old World Powers from the New World? Could the Spanish have become caught up in such a conflict in defence of what little was left to them of their Empire?).


Keep Well ladies & gentlemen and do carry on!:)
 

TFSmith121

Banned
First half, meaning before 1851?

I'm not sure if I've typed this here before, but I would just like to say that so Help Me God I haven't been able to swallow pro-Southern rhetoric since … well it's been a while; while I can feel pity for the Southerners who got caught up in its death-throes, you will find nothing remotely resembling pity for the Confederate States in my heart.

Bad Cess to them and God have mercy on the souls of men misguided enough to fight for the right to keep Human souls as property & use them as chattel (especially in an Age when technology increasingly offered the prospect of machines to do the drudge work, despite the new problems the Industrial Age unleashed upon Society).

On a note slightly less likely preaching to the Choir, might one ask you gentleman just what sort of role the British West Indies might have played in an Anglo-American fracas sometime in the first half of the 19th Century? (Would any voices in Congress have seriously advocated seizing them from the British in the interests of removing Old World Powers from the New World? Could the Spanish have become caught up in such a conflict in defence of what little was left to them of their Empire?).

Keep Well ladies & gentlemen and do carry on!:)

First half, meaning before 1851?

Best,
 
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I'm not sure if I've typed this here before, but I would just like to say that so Help Me God I haven't been able to swallow pro-Southern rhetoric since … well it's been a while; while I can feel pity for the Southerners who got caught up in its death-throes, you will find nothing remotely resembling pity for the Confederate States in my heart.

Bad Cess to them and God have mercy on the souls of men misguided enough to fight for the right to keep Human souls as property & use them as chattel (especially in an Age when technology increasingly offered the prospect of machines to do the drudge work, despite the new problems the Industrial Age unleashed upon Society).


On a note slightly less likely preaching to the Choir, might one ask you gentleman just what sort of role the British West Indies might have played in an Anglo-American fracas sometime in the first half of the 19th Century? (Would any voices in Congress have seriously advocated seizing them from the British in the interests of removing Old World Powers from the New World? Could the Spanish have become caught up in such a conflict in defence of what little was left to them of their Empire?).


Keep Well ladies & gentlemen and do carry on!:)

Any war before the Civil War, and yes indeed the South would be calling for seizing British Caribbean islands if they could in any way figure out a way to do it. Practically, I don't see any situation even in the 1820s and 1830s when the US Navy was a strong as it ever would be in comparison with the RN.

During the Civil War era or after, if the Americans could figure out a way to do it, I can easily see trying for the Bahamas or Bermuda. I don't know how that would be practical short of a British maritime disaster on an epic scale (like them fighting the Franco-Russians at the same time and thus putting that two power standard to the test), but it would definitely be on an American wish list.

Practically it is dream land short of world shaking disaster, but you did ask. As to the other islands, like the Lesser Antilles, the Leewards and the Windwards, those are even more out of reach.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
And yet....

Any war before the Civil War, and yes indeed the South would be calling for seizing British Caribbean islands if they could in any way figure out a way to do it. Practically, I don't see any situation even in the 1820s and 1830s when the US Navy was a strong as it ever would be in comparison with the RN.

During the Civil War era or after, if the Americans could figure out a way to do it, I can easily see trying for the Bahamas or Bermuda. I don't know how that would be practical short of a British maritime disaster on an epic scale (like them fighting the Franco-Russians at the same time and thus putting that two power standard to the test), but it would definitely be on an American wish list.

Practically it is dream land short of world shaking disaster, but you did ask. As to the other islands, like the Lesser Antilles, the Leewards and the Windwards, those are even more out of reach.

And yet...

Nassau in 1776.

Best,
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yep. What's interesting about Nassau is that

there is Nassau... which is why I included the Bahamas in the possible even if unlikely category

Yep. What's interesting about Nassau is that while Hopkins et al couldn't achieve the goal of seizing all the supplies there, they did manage to get the raiding force organized, to sea, avoid any British warships on passage, and manage the landing; they also got the squadron home (more or less) in one piece.

And this occurred less than a year after the Revolutionary War broke, and just months after the Continental navy and marines were organized; and yet at the same time, the British had 11 months to fortify the island and had not done all that much - which, according to Bourne, was about the same plan for the British West Indies in 1861-1862 in the event of war, with the exception of Bermuda and Kingston, Jamaica, as per:

"...Most illuminating of all was the attitude towards the West Indies. According to all reports, naval and military alike, the local defences were very poor and the garrisons were both small and, the greater part being the West Indian Regiments, possibly unreliable in a war with the North. And an attack, either by roving American ships or by a dash from the squadrons block-ading the South, was by no means out of the question. Yet none of the islands received any increase in garrison at all. Instead they were told quite bluntly that while they would have the general protection of the fleet they must not expect it to give them absolute protection and for local defence they would have to rely on local resources. Milne was given general instructions to pay particular attention to the defence of British trade and possessions but at the same time he was told not to disperse his force so as to expose it to piecemeal destruction."

Source is British Preparations for War with the North, 1861-1862, Kenneth Bourne, The English Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 301 (Oct., 1961), pp. 600-632. Obviously an American exceptionalist.

There are a couple of other interesting examples of asymetric warfare at sea during the Revolution; Jones' operations in the Irish Sea and the raids on St. Mary's Isle and Whitehaven, for example. Alarums and excursions, indeed.;)

Of course, Boyle's adventures in Chasseur come to mind as an example of just what a single comerce raider, well-led and handled, could accomplish. Interesting lists here:

http://1812privateers.org/United States/menofmarque01.htm

Best,
 
couple of interesting facts I ran into the other day while reading "How to be a Victorian"

In 1860, Sheffield's iron industry was devoting 170 tons a week(!) to crinolins (the hoops in those hooped skirts). Which is kind of amazing (1/7th of its annual production mind you)

and malnutrition was a serious problem in Britain, not even counting the Potato Famine in Ireland, but also during the ACW when large numbers of workers got laid off because of the cotton shortage

Both of those are interesting and have interesting implications during an Anglo-American War in the 1860s

I keep saying food prices matter and American wheat is critical to the global price even in the 1850s
 
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