What If the Laird Rams Had Entered Confederate Service?

Anaxagoras

Banned
During the American Civil War, the Confederate agents in Britain worked hard at fitting our warships in Britain shipyards, their most famous successes being the CSS Alabama and theCSS Shenandoah. During 1862-62, two advanced seagoing ironclad warships known as the "Laird Rams" were under construction for the Confederacy. Had they entered Confederate service, they would have been the CSS Mississippi and the CSS North Carolina. But just when the ships were about ready to sail, the British government gave in to intense diplomatic pressure from the United States and confiscated the vessels.

The British confiscation was a near-run thing and generated enormous legal and public controversy at the time. What if the vessels had successfully entered Confederate service?

From a military point of view, the two warships would have been by far the most advanced and powerful vessels in the Confederate Navy. They were considered superior to anything the Union Navy had at the time. Because of their seaworthiness, they would have been able to strike at will along the Eastern seaboard, either helping break the blockade around key Southern ports or perhaps striking at Union shipping in Northern waters. The threat posed by these two vessels was sufficient that Gideon Welles was said to be terrified by the possibility of their entering Confederate service.

The other consideration is diplomatic. Minister Charles Francis Adams, the Union representative in London, had bluntly told the British that if they failed to prevent the two warships from entering Confederate service, the result could be nothing less than a declaration of war by the United States. I highly doubt that the Lincoln administration would have gone through with this threat, but it certainly would have represented a serious rupture in relations between Great Britain and the United States which would have had serious implications for the course of the war.

Any thoughts?
 

mowque

Banned
Ugly. Re-reading my copy of Sea of Gray, the North was very afraid of those ships. I think they may have been overestimating them, but they wouldn't have helped. Overall, the South did not have the resources to field a strong enough navy to break the blockade. Also, I'm not sure if I'd trust the CSA to use them correctly.
 
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