Saphroneth
Banned
Case study: reinforcements to Canada
The Trent Affair was a major break in US-UK relations during October 1861, and which the UK found out about late November 1861 (the 28th). For a short period of time there was a very real risk of war between Britain and the United States, and it came - not quite out of the blue, but as quite a surprise. Certainly the British hadn't been expecting to send much in the way of reinforcements to their colonies in British North America (including the Province of Canada, now Ontario and Quebec, but also the Maritimes which are now part of modern Canada).
The timing was poor from the British point of view, at least regarding reinforcing Canada - in summer ships can sail right up to Montreal, and larger ones can at least reach Quebec, while both are connected by railway or canal to the interior of the country. In winter, however, the St Lawrence river is frozen.
The reaction by the British was at follows.
1) Naval. The British started sending ships very quickly, including getting some of them out of first-class reserve on a very short timescale, and sent them over. The climb-down came before too many reinforcements had arrived, but the British certainly planned on sending a lot of reinforcement ships. (The plan was to send over gunboats and larger ships, and then send them up the St Lawrence as it thawed so that any attempt to cross the river would run into a dozen or so British gunboats. They had over a hundred lying around from the War with Russia.)
2) Transports. It's a testament to the British logistics structure of the time that the first transport was chartered on the 30th November. She was loaded over the course of the next few days and left Woolwich on the 7th December, picking up an escort in Ireland on the 14th and arriving in British North America on the 5th of January after going through a storm.
Over the course of the next few days of frantic effort, ships full of both munitions and troops sailed west across the Atlantic. The usual travel time was about 9-12 days if there was no storm, with some of those hitting storms turning back and others taking anything from 16 to 23 days.
This got troops into the Maritimes, but the Maritimes are not the Province of Canada. Nevertheless, supplies made it into Canada over the winter through two routes:
Firstly, the Persia raced for the St Lawrence, and offloaded most of the 1 Bn 16th Foot at Bic - then had to leave as the ice closed up. (Without the storm the Melbourne would also have landed her supplies at Bic, these consisting of about 30,000 rifles for the miltia along with some artillery, but that didn't happen.)
Secondly, during the snow, the British achieved what I think ranks as one of the great logistical achievements. They used sleds to transport thousands of rifles and troops (the 62nd and 63rd foot) to Canada through December and January, using a route which skirted the US State of Maine, and (owing to some excellent advice from Florence Nightingale) suffered negligible casualties. This route could manage roughly 200 troops a day, and by the time of the thaw in April could theoretically have handled 10,000-15,000 troops. (It terminates at a rail line, which can then be used to get all the way to Toronto.)
The movement was halted shortly after the US climbdown. By the time it was halted, five battalions of infantry had been shipped to the Maritimes and three to Canada (two of them from the Maritimes). In total 18 battalions had been alerted to move, and roughly speaking two more groups of the same scale would have been possible from troops in Britain.
Of course, in a logistical sense, the British had a great advantage - the St Lawrence thawed in 1862 in April, at which point it would have become possible to send ships directly up it, and (much like Russia) it's very hard to campaign in Canada in the 19th century either during the winter or until the roads firm up in May. (The muddy time of the thaw is roughly early April to mid May.)
'a large force can only move and keep the field for about five months in the year. viz.,from about the middle of May to the middle of October... between the middle of December and the end of March, the intense cold forbids an army encamping, and the deep snows prevent the movement of troops... from the beginning of April to about the middle of May the state of the roads owing to the thaw of the winter snows, is such that many are impassable for an army.' (Wm. Drummond Jervois, 'Report on the Defence of Canada', 1864)
The Trent Affair was a major break in US-UK relations during October 1861, and which the UK found out about late November 1861 (the 28th). For a short period of time there was a very real risk of war between Britain and the United States, and it came - not quite out of the blue, but as quite a surprise. Certainly the British hadn't been expecting to send much in the way of reinforcements to their colonies in British North America (including the Province of Canada, now Ontario and Quebec, but also the Maritimes which are now part of modern Canada).
The timing was poor from the British point of view, at least regarding reinforcing Canada - in summer ships can sail right up to Montreal, and larger ones can at least reach Quebec, while both are connected by railway or canal to the interior of the country. In winter, however, the St Lawrence river is frozen.
The reaction by the British was at follows.
1) Naval. The British started sending ships very quickly, including getting some of them out of first-class reserve on a very short timescale, and sent them over. The climb-down came before too many reinforcements had arrived, but the British certainly planned on sending a lot of reinforcement ships. (The plan was to send over gunboats and larger ships, and then send them up the St Lawrence as it thawed so that any attempt to cross the river would run into a dozen or so British gunboats. They had over a hundred lying around from the War with Russia.)
2) Transports. It's a testament to the British logistics structure of the time that the first transport was chartered on the 30th November. She was loaded over the course of the next few days and left Woolwich on the 7th December, picking up an escort in Ireland on the 14th and arriving in British North America on the 5th of January after going through a storm.
Over the course of the next few days of frantic effort, ships full of both munitions and troops sailed west across the Atlantic. The usual travel time was about 9-12 days if there was no storm, with some of those hitting storms turning back and others taking anything from 16 to 23 days.
This got troops into the Maritimes, but the Maritimes are not the Province of Canada. Nevertheless, supplies made it into Canada over the winter through two routes:
Firstly, the Persia raced for the St Lawrence, and offloaded most of the 1 Bn 16th Foot at Bic - then had to leave as the ice closed up. (Without the storm the Melbourne would also have landed her supplies at Bic, these consisting of about 30,000 rifles for the miltia along with some artillery, but that didn't happen.)
Secondly, during the snow, the British achieved what I think ranks as one of the great logistical achievements. They used sleds to transport thousands of rifles and troops (the 62nd and 63rd foot) to Canada through December and January, using a route which skirted the US State of Maine, and (owing to some excellent advice from Florence Nightingale) suffered negligible casualties. This route could manage roughly 200 troops a day, and by the time of the thaw in April could theoretically have handled 10,000-15,000 troops. (It terminates at a rail line, which can then be used to get all the way to Toronto.)
The movement was halted shortly after the US climbdown. By the time it was halted, five battalions of infantry had been shipped to the Maritimes and three to Canada (two of them from the Maritimes). In total 18 battalions had been alerted to move, and roughly speaking two more groups of the same scale would have been possible from troops in Britain.
Of course, in a logistical sense, the British had a great advantage - the St Lawrence thawed in 1862 in April, at which point it would have become possible to send ships directly up it, and (much like Russia) it's very hard to campaign in Canada in the 19th century either during the winter or until the roads firm up in May. (The muddy time of the thaw is roughly early April to mid May.)
'a large force can only move and keep the field for about five months in the year. viz.,from about the middle of May to the middle of October... between the middle of December and the end of March, the intense cold forbids an army encamping, and the deep snows prevent the movement of troops... from the beginning of April to about the middle of May the state of the roads owing to the thaw of the winter snows, is such that many are impassable for an army.' (Wm. Drummond Jervois, 'Report on the Defence of Canada', 1864)
