The Trent War

67th Tigers

Banned
Aside from that, guncotton was so unstable and dangerous that NOBODY was using it as a propellant in the 1860s. It stayed out of use until somebody finally figured out how to stabilize it in the 1880s.

The British were experimenting with it. There are several reports from that committee in the same box as the Trent Affair warplans in the National Archives. As you say, it was considered too unstable.
 
How much guncotton did the Confederacy use during the war, Snake? Exactly none.

Not referring to guncotton but to regular ol' gunpowder. If Josiah Gorgas could make bricks without straw and create the only functional part of the Confederate government, Meiggs, with equal talent, is more than able to do the same. There wasn't a great deal of anything required to make gunpowder in the Confederacy but Gorgas did such a good job that the starving Army of Northern Virginia had an abundance of ammo but no food. Essentially I'm asking why if Josiah Gorgas, talented on par with Meiggs, could create logistical miracles the Union counterpart with far more resources is unable to do at least the same? The parallels to Russia would be in economic erosion, the major difference would be Union troops going to battle actually armed as opposed to being mobs with sticks as the Russian Army turned into in 1915-6.
 
Not referring to guncotton but to regular ol' gunpowder. If Josiah Gorgas could make bricks without straw and create the only functional part of the Confederate government, Meiggs, with equal talent, is more than able to do the same. There wasn't a great deal of anything required to make gunpowder in the Confederacy but Gorgas did such a good job that the starving Army of Northern Virginia had an abundance of ammo but no food. Essentially I'm asking why if Josiah Gorgas, talented on par with Meiggs, could create logistical miracles the Union counterpart with far more resources is unable to do at least the same? The parallels to Russia would be in economic erosion, the major difference would be Union troops going to battle actually armed as opposed to being mobs with sticks as the Russian Army turned into in 1915-6.

See my edit to post # 14. To expand on it...

In order to do logistical miracles, supplies have to exist, or there must be access to the supplies necessary to produce the item you're seeking to produce. The best logistician in the world can't produce the ingredients of gunpowder out of thin air. Niter is the big issue. The Confederacy had access to niter from Britain through most of the war, and imported hundreds of thousands of pounds of it. That, rather than Confederate production, actually fueled most of the gunpowder production in the Confederacy. The Union won't have that access, because Britain controls almost the entire supply of niter which can be purchased overseas, and the Union is at war with Britain (and there is an effective British blockade in place to prevent importing from anybody else). The niter caves which the South mined during the war don't exist in the North (the bats which produce the niter don't like the cold temperatures). Yes, they can start collecting urine and excrement and setting up niter beds like the South did. But niter beds take 1-2 years to mature and start producing any niter. So, assuming the Trent War gets started in late 1861 or early 1862, you're looking at sometime in late 1863 before you'll see any niter out of those beds. And if you're going to produce the quantities you're going to need, you'll have to start diverting into the niter beds a good portion of the animal dung which is the main source of fertilizer in those days. So your agricultural production will start dropping as a result. Now you've got to deal with the possibility of starvation on top of the powder supply problem.
 
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Nobody was using it because nobody had a pressing need to. The Great Powers had the ability to supply their own gunpowder, no other industrializing nations with the capacity to advance smokeless powder got into a fight with them long enough to get this "Manhattan Project" going.

Well, there were a lot of other reasons why they would have been trying to develop a smokeless powder, and why, indeed, scientists in most of the industrialized nations were working on the problem right from the time guncotton was discovered in 1846 to the time Poudre B was developed in the mid 1880s. Those reasons were 1) black powder makes lots of smoke, which confers many military disadvantages; 2) black powder is very corrosive; 3) black powder causes very significant fouling of a weapon which uses it. This was very important for Civil War rifled weapons because the minie balls and similar ammunition being used fit the bore more tightly than the old round balls did, and thus the gun fouled faster than the old smoothbore muskets did (my own experience firing live ammo from a .577 Enfield P53 Rifle Musket is that after firing about ten to twelve shots, unless you're using something like a Williams round which has a zinc ring on the bottom to help scrape the fouling out, the gun will be so fouled with black powder residue that you won't be able to ram a bullet down the barrel without a hammer, and maybe not even then. That's most likely why every 10th round in package of ammo issued during the Civil War generally was a Williams bullet or something like it). So there was plenty of pressing need for it, and everybody was trying to get it. It says something about the difficulty that nobody succeeded for over 20 years after the Civil War.

No, it's not. But the Confederacy was depending on just that OTL, so I think we have there proof that governments *will* do that.

Well, the Confederacy had good reason to think they'd be able to get the supplies they needed to win the war. As it turned out, they were wrong. But that's a far cry from depending on the slight possibility that someone MIGHT invent a way to make guncotton stable enough to use as a propellant. There was NO reason to think that was a likely outcome. You're comparing something that's kind of stupid in retrospect (but didn't appear so at the time) to something that's almost Hitler-level of crazy and wouldn't have appeared as anything other than that. I can almost see Abe sitting in his bunker..."We will yet prevail! Our scientists will invent SMOKELESS POWDER, our VENGEANCE WEAPON." Then, when that doesn't happen, Eva Braun comes in, they take cyanide together, and Abe shoots himself. :D
 
See my edit to post # 14. To expand on it...

In order to do logistical miracles, supplies have to exist, or there must be access to the supplies necessary to produce the item you're seeking to produce. The best logistician in the world can't produce the ingredients of gunpowder out of thin air. Niter is the big issue. The Confederacy had access to niter from Britain through most of the war, and imported hundreds of thousands of pounds of it. That, rather than Confederate production, actually fueled most of the gunpowder production in the Confederacy. The Union won't have that access, because Britain controls almost the entire supply of niter which can be purchased overseas, and the Union is at war with Britain (and there is an effective British blockade in place to prevent importing from anybody else). The niter caves which the South mined during the war don't exist in the North (the bats which produce the niter don't like the cold temperatures). Yes, they can start collecting urine and excrement and setting up niter beds like the South did. But niter beds take 1-2 years to mature and start producing any niter. So, assuming the Trent War gets started in late 1861 or early 1862, you're looking at sometime in late 1863 before you'll see any niter out of those beds. And if you're going to produce the quantities you're going to need, you'll have to start diverting into the niter beds a good portion of the animal dung which is the main source of fertilizer in those days. So your agricultural production will start dropping as a result. Now you've got to deal with the possibility of starvation on top of the powder supply problem.

And the Confederacy discovered plenty of such supplies, which the North is more than able to do so given that this POD is well after Kentucky's decided to go Yankee. :rolleyes: I will note, however, that there's not a snowball's chance in Hell the USA could fight the British Empire and a secessionist bloc the size of European Russia at the same time, and it will economically disintegrate regardless of how well or poorly it does on the battlefield.
 
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Well, the Confederacy had good reason to think they'd be able to get the supplies they needed to win the war. As it turned out, they were wrong. But that's a far cry from depending on the slight possibility that someone MIGHT invent a way to make guncotton stable enough to use as a propellant. There was NO reason to think that was a likely outcome. You're comparing something that's kind of stupid in retrospect (but didn't appear so at the time) to something that's almost Hitler-level of crazy and wouldn't have appeared as anything other than that. I can almost see Abe sitting in his bunker..."We will yet prevail! Our scientists will invent SMOKELESS POWDER, our VENGEANCE WEAPON." Then, when that doesn't happen, Eva Braun comes in, they take cyanide together, and Abe shoots himself. :D

He was referring, I believe, to the cotton embargo which may make the top 10 on the all-time list of bad ideas.
 
Oh God not the gunpowder debate again?

Yes the British control and own the world nitre trade which is centred upon India which by a quirk of fate and climate is the only country able to produce it by natural processes in vast quantities.
Yes the British control the world Chilie nitre and gunano trades and can blockade these products at will.

Thus the Union has no access to sufficiently large quantities of nitrates to make gunpowder with.

There are several small deposits of bat guano in the USA. This can be mined purified and then needs to be converted to potassium nitrate before it can be used in gunpowder. The only company that was capable of doing this in the ACW and the only late in the war and for small (ie much less than needed) quantities was the New Haven Chemical company. They could, indeed would make gunpowder this way it would not be nearly enough to supply demand and the deposits were small and would soon play out.

The Union could build nitre beds as the Confederacy did. They take around six months to mature. A further problem is that it uses animal and human waste products. In Europe farming is intensive and all the farms are close together making collection easy. In much of the USA farms are big (ie larger lower yeild fields) and far apart making collection difficult. Nitre beds DID NOT supply the Confederacy with the powder it needed much of it was smuggled through the USN's blockade. In a war with Britain, the task of the USA acquiring nitre and then running it through the blockade is going to be nearly impossible as 1) British own the nitre, 2) Blockade is better, 3) Blockade runners have to cross the Atlantic without any bases of the Union coast.

In conclusion the Union will be chronically short of gunpowder at the start of a war with the British. They can divert all, or nearly all of thier commercial stocks to military and naval use this might last them six months or more IF they don't have to defend the coastal forts or fight any big battles against the Confederacy. If they do use all of the commercial powder the effect of its loss on the Union economy and industry will be terrible if not catastrophic. The production of gold and silver in the west will slump. Coal, copper and iron ore production will also slump if not collapse.

To the best of this author's knowledge the Union has no source of Sulphur either. How they get hold of this a big problem.

At the time of the Trent Affair the Union Navy was seriously short of powder and the army a few large engagement from running out.

In the event of war with Britain the Union may have to come to terms due to lack of powder, it would not be the first country to have had to do so.
 
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