As to ITWNMUOTOS, my complaints were far more than broken telegraph lines and ships arriving one day early. Some of the problems of ITWNMUOTOS are:
* The British Empire commits to the Trent war with a speed and unanimity unheard of for a war where national survival was not at stake.
* The US does virtually nothing to prepare for the war.
* Britain does not inform the US envoy to Britain and allow him to return home on a US ship. This allows Britain to make several surprise attacks on the Union, but there are no political repercussions for this major breach of protocol.
* The logistical problems of supplying a large body of troops in British North America are downplayed, if not ignored.
* British ships are repeatedly sailing faster than they could at full steam, sailing unscathed through waters so shallow they would beach or even wreck, and being completely unaffected by severe storms that scattered and damaged real ships in OTL.
* A British ship that was decommissioned and in dock in Britain manages to capture a Union ship in Hong Kong.
* A British captain so inept he sunk his own ship in broad daylight in good weather sails up a river too shallow for his ship to pass to destroy a Union railroad bridge.
* The Union is unable to repair the bridge in spite of the bridge being a couple blocks away from a lumber yard and an iron works.
* Britain moves decides to produce an new type of ironclad that would be much smaller, less seaworthy, less powerful, and more experimental than the Monitor. They move from initial proposal to having a finished design in a 3 days, as opposed to the 127 it took for the Monitor.
* ITWNMUOTOS claims the Russian fortress of Bomarsund was reduced only by "sailing vessels with steam power", something that directly contradicts the facts that Bomarsund took "No great amount of damage" and that compelling its surrender required the deploying of large numbers of troops and artillery on land.
* ITWNMUOTOS claims that Moorsom shell fuses were reliable, even though a report by the Journal for Royal Artillery that is read by British commanders in ITWNMUOTOS concluded that the Moorsom fuses "will not stand the full service charges" and "It was considered a waste of ammunition to fire more of them on the present occasion, and not unattended with danger to to the bystanders" and that they switched to testing another type of fuse after "the failure of Moorsom's fuses".
* ITWNMUOTOS incorrectly claims all of the Union's "iron comes from Britain", when less than 1/3rd iron used in the US was imported.
* ITWNMUOTOS incorrectly claims the US initially had no troops or arms that they could move to defend the Canadian border, which requires ignoring the Department of New England, the Department of New York, and Burnside Expedition.
In short, ITWNMUOTOS is based on false assumptions; allows Britain to act more swiftly and unanimously than they did when national survival was at stake; and lets Britain ignore friction, logistics, and the laws of physics.
Let's go down the list.
1) The British Empire does not commit to the Trent War with a speed unheard of - it makes an ultimatum and then fulfils it. It does not need a unanimity unheard of because it can do everything it needs to do with existing resources, except for a couple of dozen new ships (mostly ironclad floating batteries).
2) The US does not do nothing to prepare for the war. They do nothing
over OTL until the divergence - their problem is that the British have a fleet already in place which suffices to overwhelm them. Believe it or not, the coastal forts the British hit after Fort Delaware show
massive upgrading compared to what was in place OTL.
3) That was not a breach of protocol at the time. The British do not detain the US envoy, nor do they make a surprise attack - instead they enact their ultimatum. They're actually being nicer in Open Sea than they would have been OTL since some indications are that their OTL plan would have had them attacking the moment they had heard the ultimatum was rejected; instead, the first military actions in the timeline take place
after the confirmation of the declaration of war.
4) I don't ignore the logistical problems - they're just not as big as you seem to expect. For the full force of mobilized troops with modern weapons (150,000 with Enfield rifles and 120 Armstrong guns) a single ship with 800 tons of cargo would either fit a hundred and thirty rifle rounds per man or 1,000 shells per gun.
The rest of it is feeding people, and that's not outrageous - it's asking Canada (pop. 2.6 million) to feed another 50,000 or so men and perhaps 12,000 extra horses.
5) Since you say "repeatedly" I assume you can provide multiple examples of each. I'll admit to needing to tweak the arrival date by a day or so for the frigate reaching Bermuda, but for the most part I assumed the weather was "neutral".
6) Changed as per your identification of a legitimate mistake.
7) To claim a given officer made one mistake and therefore is inept in all senses is ludicrous; in any case, I've mentioned repeatedly that this is something I would correct, and there was considerable plausibility discussion after you quit this thread which was focused on whether it was possible which led to that decision.
8) Not quickly. If the bridge had been destroyed then it would not be a quick repair job - you could certainly get troops and probably light artillery past that point, but heavy guns would not be possible to move without substantial repair work.
9) This is a case of their modifying one of their existing designs. And you're wrong about some of that - the new ironclad (the Zodiac class, I Springsharped it out) was about 800 tons displacement, but as a properly built broadside ironclad was
more powerful than the Monitor and just as seaworthy (due to having higher freeboard, 8-9 feet). It's also not experimental because they already had eight similar ironclads, and we know the French had built several ironclads very close to the size.
As for three days, my information suggests that they had plans in place to put them out to tender on event of a Trent War - that is, they had defined the requirements ahead of time as a contingency, to order as soon as possible. (In Britain a lot of the detail design work was done by the constructor.)
10) As per the sources I've used (including Gunboat! and Before The Ironclad) the key work of reducing the fort was the naval bombardment by large numbers of guns of 6" or greater calibre, including rifles.
11) The report, as has already been pointed out to you, said the use of the
distant (super) charge resulted in the pre-detonation of Moorsom fuzes. Shells were normally fired with
reduced charges; the
distant charge was reserved for firing solid iron bolts.
12) All the Union's
gun iron comes from Britain, as I corrected after once misstating it. I have tended to assume the Union would be able to continue their baseline production of rifles in large part, however - the real problem is the large hole created by lack of deliveries from overseas.
13) The US initially had no
plans to move troops to the Canadian border; I don't see this is something it's possible to dispute, unless you can produce those plans.
As for troops
available, the Department of New England and the Department of New York between them had 12,000 troops as of December 31 1861, which is not enough to defend the coasts of New York and New England let alone send troops to the border; Burnside's expedition is difficult because it is hard to tell when precisely it moved to Fort Monroe, and in discussion on the last few pages I've mentioned that I would have had Burnside withdrawn but the Port Royal expedition captured. Basically it's a wash between Burnside getting away and much of TW Sherman's force getting away, in terms of troops available to defend the border.
If you're interested, meanwhile, I've been putting together on the last few days an operational timeline of when troops get to where. If you have any criticism I'd love to hear it - it's good to have someone trying to poke holes, so long as they're sensible about it.
In short, ITWNMUOTOS is based on false assumptions; allows Britain to act more swiftly and unanimously than they did when national survival was at stake; and lets Britain ignore friction, logistics, and the laws of physics.
I believe I've answered most of the issues of false assumptions above.
Acting swiftly and unanimously - swiftly I don't think so, unanimously is not needed.
Ignoring friction, logistics and the laws of physics - I'm not sure I have them ignore friction because I was adding a day regularly to the time ships would get places as compared to the maximum speed of the slowest vessel in the force; ignoring logistics is not the case as far as I'm aware (though do give an example of how); I'd love for you to give an example of where I'm ignoring the laws of physics, especially as a matter of course. (Of course, I do also let the US get away with things - the 8" Parrott and 15" smoothbores are produced
far faster than realistic in Open Sea.)
