WI: The RMS Trent sunk?

Probably an overdone one, but I'll ask anyway. If it is overdone, I apologize

Assume, for one reason or another, that shooting breaks out between RMS Trent and USS San Jacinto, in which the Trent and her crew are killed. Perhaps Lt. Fairfax decides to bring an armed escort on board the Trent, which ends up lighting a metaphorical powderkeg.

Presumably, the unprovoked sinking of a British vessel by an American one would make OTL's Trent Affair look like a petty neighborhood dispute.

Would the British side with the Confederacy less out of love for the slavers and more for the desire for revenge? Could this break out into an Anglo-Confederate/American war? If so, how would such a war proceed?
 
civillians ship

I think you need to read the story of the Trent affair again. The Trent was a civillian ship, how were they going to fire back on the union warship. Also the boarding party Lt. Fairfax took aboard the Trent consisted of armed marines.
 
From what I understand, Captain Charles Wilkes was fairly impulsive, and I don't think it would take more than a grievous miscommunication or mistaking of a gesture for reaching for a weapon for things to spiral out of control.

With regards to the armed escort, I remember reading only that a pair of Union ships escorting the San Jacinto, carrying armed men, were involved. I don't recall any of armed marines boarding the Trent?

In that case, it makes the POD even easier; one of the marines on board misinterprets a gesture and impulsively fires, setting off a gunfight. OR, well, something along those lines.
 
If the Trent had been damaged by Union action, I'm not going to follow the line of sinking it, ships are notoriously hard to sink, the Lincoln Administration would have a completely public relations disaster on its hands. Not only did the US Navy completely over step its bounds in stopping the packet in international waters, but sinking it would make things worst.

Seward would be visiting the British Embassy and try like the dickens to ease the situation. I don't think it would result in British recognition of the Confederacy.
 
I could see the British demanding compensation for the loss of the ship plus some kind of face-saving apology but they knew the cause of the CSA wasn't a popular one back home. Just because the vast majority of the British population couldn't vote didn't mean they couldn't express their discontent with an unpopular war in other ways.
 
The Trent is sunk and the British establishment want to recognise the CSA to get back at the US.

Five issues need to be considered:

1) King Cotton - the CSA assumed that Britain (certainly) and France (maybe) would support them due to witholding cotton from the European markets forcing widespread missery in the cotton towns. Whilst the theory was sound, in practice the Brits had stockpiled the cotton and the effects would be much slower to show.

2) US Corn - more immediate was the reliance on the US to feed the British people. Without this a widespread famine may have affected the UK and NO politician wanted to be responsible for starving the mob.

3) The commoners in the UK - generally the common people in the UK were supportinve of the US and since 1832 most politicians had to at least achnowledge what the voters thought.

4) Canada - the US would almost certainly launch an attack against the Brits, and whilst the Navy could probably hold the US Navy in abayance (and inforce a blockade) the weakness would be Canada. It would be a repeat of the 1812 war.

5) Bismark - whilst the French would probably support the war the Germans certainly would not and Bismark would make trouble, what if he signed a deal with the Russians (who supported the US)?
 
What if Mason and Slidell were shot during the boarding party (more as an overreaction to a perceived threat than actual resistance). On inspection they are unarmed (at least when shot).

The Trent is released (minus what papers the envoys have).

How does the crisis now play out? With no prisoners to release and no easy exit, what does Palmerstone et al do now?
 
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