Forts, Ports and All Sorts - the Attack on Maine

During Burnished Rows of Steel, we are presented with an example of a British attack on the port of Portland, Maine. This is a distinctly odd attack for reasons already explored (including the ponderously slow pace of the troop landing and the overinflated scale of the Maine garrison) but on a more naval scale there are also problems as presented.









The first, of course, is that the attack is taking place at all. We are told clearly that the Portland attack was considered only to be done early in the crisis, and that the Royal Navy considered that it should only be done with considerably sufficient force, and yet (rather than sending reinforcements up the St Lawrence – the attack takes place in June) the British move in anyway.

The author has stated that he thinks the earliest that an attack against Portland could take place is on the same timescale as the attack on Sevastopol, and appears to stick to this timetable rigidly – despite any lack of applicability in other ways. For example, since almost all the troops used were already in the Maritimes by mid-January in reality, then it seems as though he suggests it would take four months to plan an operation around a hundred miles from a major British naval base; this is very much at odds with the American achievement that takes place in this timeline (but not ours) of capturing Norfolk with ease.

...as late as December, Fort Preble had all of 12 24 pounders and a single 8 inch gun in the battery; but the slow months of the short-of-war period, with communications across the North Atlantic delayed by winter storms, had given the Americans an opportunity. They took full advantage of it. By June, Preble had been fitted with 36 guns (16 8 inch, 17 32 pounder, 3 24 pounder, 2 12 pounder, 4 6 pounder, and 4 mortars), while Scammell had 59 pieces (14 8 inch guns, 14 8 inch howitzers, 23 32 pounders, 8 24 pounders, 5 12 pounders, and 2 6 pounders), and Fort Gorges had emplaced its first battery, of six brand new 8 inch rifles.

The harbour defences of Portland, as presented, may be too great – certainly there are half a dozen 8” rifles (where the first one was forged in March, and where they were invented by a soldier currently busy running the artillery of a field army) which seems to be a little excessive for just one port – it represents over 25% of all the 8” rifles the US Army possessed over a year later, and is probably every single one of the 8” rifles the US Army would have at all by this point. (First Parrott Rifle cast in March 1862, 22 cast for the Army by July 1863; roughly 1.5 per month on average. By June there should be about four delivered.)
https://markerhunter.wordpress.com/category/battlefields/fort-washington/

In addition, there are extensive extra defences:

The channels and rivers were obstructed by blockships, booms, cables, chains, rafts, and torpedoes of every description; some – like those emplaced by the Russians off Kronstadt a half-dozen years before – were electrically fired from shore; others were scarcely more advanced than those designed by David Bushnell for the “battle of the kegs” in 1778.

This kind of thing is precisely why the British plan was to move on their principal targets as soon as possible, rather than allow six months of preparation work. Nevertheless it is an impressive level of defence for any port, given that the first Confederate minefields were emplaced only a few months prior in reality and that the Confederacy had pursued this technology longer than the Union.






The British attack force is considerable, consisting of

The British fleet – four ships of the line, four ironclads, six frigates, two frigates converted to bomb (mortar) ships, six gunboats, and more than two score of Admiralty and merchant transports, coastal steamers, tugs and schooners, loaded with more than 10,000 British army regulars and Royal Marines and their artillery and supplies

The ironclads consist of Warrior, Defence, Thunderbolt and Terror. All of these ironclads are immune to penetration from any of the weapons in the US forts except for the 8” rifles, which is probably why the 8” rifles are present.

It is a little surprising only six gunboats are present; we know from earlier statements that they are not on the Great Lakes or on the inland rivers of Canada, so there should be roughly fifty gunboats available for Particular Service. Nevertheless, the naval force as described should be more than sufficient to reduce the fortifications by itself, but the plan as outlined is for the British infantry to march overland and take Fort Preble in the rear. (A comparison is made to Taku Forts, but does not make clear that the Taku Forts battle in question – 1860, 3rd Taku Forts – involved a gunboat attack up an obstructed river into the fields of fire of forts totalling several hundred guns; hence the need for the overland attack. A later allusion is made to 2^nd Taku Forts, but 1^st Taku Forts – the one where gunboats disabled the forts by themselves – does not show up.)

As the Army and marines were sorting things out, the leading British warships passed up the channel, past Trundy Point and Jordan Reef, before threading the needle into the fairway between Portland Head and Ram Island Ledge. The mortar ships anchored in the deep water close to Cushing Island and tried a few ranging shots toward Fort Scammell; the battleships anchored further offshore, and the gunboats either anchored or trundled slowly around the larger ships, looking into Whitehead Passage and Hussey Sound and scooping up the occasional lumber schooner or errant fisherman deeper in the bay. Cochrane’s ironclads circled at low speed in front of the upper channel, waiting for Paulet’s troops to break out from the farms and woodlots of the Cape at Maiden Cove – the expected half-way point of their movement – and signal they were ready for the approach march toward Preble; once the troops were in position, the plan was Cochrane’s ships would run up the channel and open their bombardment of the forts in earnest.

A key problem with this description is that the placement of the ships is already well within their own range of the US forts. Mortar gunboats (of which the British constructed 54 during the Crimean War) engaged and destroyed targets at over two miles, and the Armstrong gun is a heavy rifle capable of wrecking masonry walls at a range of over a mile; the British position is at most 2,000 yards from Fort Scammell.

If engaging from ships was a bad idea, the British could emplace heavy guns instead on Cushing Island or Peaks Island, though the Thunderbolt and Terror could sail right up to the walls of Preble and Scammell without any expectation of damage (they are immune to the 8” shell guns and everything smaller)

Not all of these are things that could be done on the first day, but the reason they are mentioned is the fundamental problem with the whole naval campaign: to whit, the British run into a problem in their overland march on the night of 1-2 June, and then we pick up again in August with no further progress having been made.




This is the most astonishing thing out of the naval campaign. The British send four ironclads, four ships of the line, six frigates, two mortar frigates and six gunboats to attack Portland, and then do not use any of them for two months. No bombardments of the forts are noted, and the British do not appear to be able to meaningfully impede the Americans laying additional minefields and obstructions whenever they see fit; no landing of guns is made to bombard the forts; no heavy bombardment by mortar ships, in spite of the bombardment on Sveaborg being made until the mortars split from overuse.

In the amount of time that we are shown, the British could have taken Mallet's Mortar (a 36” modular mortar from the Crimean War) and constructed it on Cushing Island, or sent divers down as they did in the Crimean War to remove the mines (which was done without casualties), or simply charted the routes into the bay which are dry during the low spring tide and sent Thunderbolt or Terror in during the high spring tide.




The utter inactivity of the British can only be described as ridiculous, especially in light of the many successful fort bombardments made during the twenty-year period either side that TFSmith limits himself to – a mere list of bombardments over 1854-1864 is:

Russia

Odessa (Apr 54)*

Petropavlovsk (Aug 54)

Bomarsund (Aug 54)

Kerch, Taganrog and Yeisk (1855)

Sveaborg (Aug 55)

Kinburn (Oct 55)

6x Naval bombardments of Sebastapol

17th Oct 54

9th Apr 55

6th June 55

17th June 55

17th August 55

5th Sept 55

China

1st Canton (Oct 56)

Bogue (Nov 56)

Fatshan Creek (Jun 57)

2nd Canton (Dec 57)

1st Taku Forts (May 58)

2nd Taku Forts (May 59)

3rd Taku Forts (Aug 60)

Persian War

Bushire (Nov 56)

Japan

Kagoshima (Aug 63)

2nd Shimonoseki (Sept 64)

(The list above is not comprehensive. In particular the Sea of Azov campaign saw repeated bombardments of any port the gunboats could reach, which was nearly all of them.)


* having taken place barely four weeks after the news arrived of the Russian rejection of the British ultimatum, this itself unhinges the Crimean timeline to which TFSmith ascribes his timescale.



In many cases these were against heavier works than the American ones presented here; nevertheless nothing happens at Maine for two months. The only thing it does is tie down a substantial fraction of the British Army (which should be defending Canada if there are force allocation problems) and an enormous fraction of the Royal Navy ironclad stable.