On My Unbanning

Apologies for the silence over the past few weeks. Needless to say, I'm very grateful for everybody who spoke out in my support. I'm also extremely thankful to Ian for acknowledging that the original decision to ban me was incorrect and reinstating me.

Unfortunately, right around the same time, a pretty sizeable project landed on my desk at work. Although it's not keeping me as busy as it was, I might be pressed for time to contribute to this site over the next month or so. However, even if I can't spare the time for the really sizeable projects, there are some smaller ones that I should be able to write up and post.

As both a thank you for the support, and an apology for the lack of communication, I thought I'd post some of my detailed research for others to use. I've talked previously about my lists of ship positions, so here they are:

Royal Navy ship positions as at 5 January 1862

Union Navy ship positions as at 26 January 1862

The dates may seem arbitrary, but they're intended to be a little before the Cabinet confirmation of the decision to go to war (in the case of the Royal Navy) and the news arriving in America (in the case of the Union). Where it's possible to do so, I've extended the timeframe to allow for the delay in notifying some of the more distant stations.

As you can tell, these have focused on ship positions rather than the minutiae of armament and captains. They're very much a work in progress, but there's enough information present in them already to make them useful. Perhaps most importantly, it's almost all based on the kind of evidence that TFSmith dismisses as worthless. I hope you find it as useful as I have.

West Pointless

We have seen previously that TFSmith likes West Point, to the extent of staffing the Union army with West Point graduates who happpened to be insane, or who publicly expressed regret that McClellan had not led a military coup to overthrow the Lincoln administration and rescind the Emancipation Proclamation. How far does this admiration for military education go? Let's find out.

Mississippi Burning (1)

In chapter 4 part 1, the USS Mississippi engages a British squadron. I intend to do a fuller post to explore the problems with this battle, but in the meantime I have a request for your assistance. I simply can't make head or tail of what's going on: can you help?

On My Banning

This isn't a personal blog, but I thought it best to provide a quick explanation of the current situation. Long story short: I recently got banned from AH.com. The reasons given for this were:

• I was the sock-puppet of a banned member
• I created an offsite blog in collaboration with neoConfederate banned members in order to nitpick the work of others
• I constantly attack people who disagree with me
• I was dragging threads off-topic

In response, I argued that:

• I am not the sock-puppet of a banned member
• None of the three contributors to this blog were banned, and none (to my knowledge) are neoConfederates
• We confirmed with Ian the Admin that it was acceptable to create this blog before creating it
• In a year on the site I had a single kick, received just under a month ago.
• Since that kick, I had not spoken to the member who felt that I was being unduly harsh to them. I have also pre-emptively disengaged from many other members with whom I am well aware that I disagree.
• I did not think that my contributions were particularly off-topic given that the posts before mine had been discussing Woodrow Wilson's presidency and the motivations behind unrestricted submarine warfare.

The admins conceded these points, but at the moment it doesn't seem that they intend to reverse my ban. Understandably, this leaves me somewhat nonplussed. I didn't contribute to the site's donation drive because I thought soliciting money from members was inconsistent with the site's 'my house, my rules' moderation policy. However, I don't get any pleasure from being proved right in this way.

I don't intend to make this a long, self-justifying screed, but I do feel the need to respond to one point made in the thread after my departure. Galveston Bay claimed that ' It would not be hard for me to find numerous examples of sarcastic mean spirited posts directed specifically at me and others in any thread on this topic going back at least 3 years made by him.' I suspect it would be remarkably difficult to find three years of such posts, as I only joined the site on 6 June 2016. My join date appears in the header of every single post I have made, so I struggle to explain his confusion on this point.

Unfortunately, there isn't any advice I can give to those who wish to avoid my fate (other than 'don't talk about the Trent Affair'). I do, however, wish you all the best of luck in your continued interactions on the board. Normal service will now be resumed.

Naval Gazing (2)

Having thoroughly - perhaps too thoroughly - considered TFSmith's usage of sources, we will now learn some of the mistakes they lead him to make in the positioning of ships.

Naval Gazing (1)

In an unrelated discussion thread, TFSmith explained his methodology for researching ship locations:

‘Do a search for "The Navy List" for the appropriate years (1861, 1862, whatever) on Google Books. They have all been scanned in; aside from the occasional finger, they are pretty amazing images, and - depending on your version of Acrobat - are searchable. If not, the indexes are completely accurate.

 The Navy List was published annually, even quarterly; assignments of ships (whether active, in reserve/ordinary, building, etc.) and the officers of the ships in commission are included, along with flag officers and their staffs for all the various fleets, squadrons, and detachments.’

Like his explanation of his economic model for the war, this is very helpful: it allows us to explain exactly where he goes wrong.

A warning to readers: this particular post may itself be accused of navel-gazing, as it considers in detail why TFSmith's use of sources is so misguided. If that doesn't interest you, you can ignore this post and wait for the follow-up, which deals with some of the things he's actually got wrong.

Shubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Outside the TL, TFSmith has expressed his belief that 'the US has a gunboat there [on Puget Sound] that is the equal of Grappler'. We know what he intends this gunboat to be:

'the only American ship of any significance on the Sound was the Revenue Service sidewheel gunboat USRC Shubrick (2), which had helped evacuate the small Army contingent on San Juan Island and then fled south toward Olympia.'

Why is the equation between Shubrick and Grappler, when the British had two gunboats permanently stationed in Puget Sound? More importantly, why is it so wrong?

HMS Grappler:

• 1 68pdr (8in) smoothbore muzzle-loader
• 1 32pdr (6.4in) smoothbore muzzle-loader
• 2 24pdr (5.82in) smoothbore muzzle-loading howitzer

USRC Shubrick:

• 1 24pdr (5.82in) Dahlgren muzzle-loading howitzer
• 1 12pdr (4.62in) Dahlgren smoothbore muzzle-loading howitzer

Even if Grappler landed both her main guns, she would still outgun Shubrick and would also have the advantage of screw propulsion over paddle. So how is Shubrick ‘the equal of Grappler, at least’?

Bonus: The image of Shubrick which TFSmith posted here comes from the USCG page. Right click the image, select properties, and it informs you that the address is:

proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uscg.mil%2Fhistory%2Fimg%2FShubrick1857sm.jpg&hash=a97d7de9ad9a33fef89c85db7affed78

This persumably means that TFSmith has read the page, and knows that Shubrick carries only two howitzers. So why did he ever claim that it was the equal of Grappler?

Yankee Catholic

The author has long claimed that the Canadien population was a hotbed of anti-British sentiment merely waiting in the wings to rise up against the British rule. Of course, with the repeated failures to do so in 1775, 1812, or even 1866, one has cause to doubt the author's cocksure proclamations.

What the author repeatedly seems to fail to realize is that the populace of Canada East (modern Quebec) was predominantly, rural, traditional, and deeply Catholic. In fact here's a brief sketch the author paints of the region:

Although the country people were devout Catholics and deeply conservative, the prewar connections with the States made a difference when war broke out in April; very few of the sedentary militia had responded with enthusiasm to their call-ups, and the percentage of Canadiens in the volunteers – always low since the force’s organization in 1855 as an Anglophone-dominated service, with many traditions drawn from the units that had helped put down the 1837 and 1838 rebellions - had not risen significantly. The reality of how the war began, with the failed British attack at Rouse’s Point, had done even less to carry French Canada to the cause; unlike 50 years earlier, the Americans had not attacked first, and there were already thousands of men of Canadien extraction in the U.S. forces by the winter of 1861-62. 

The subsequent months of crisis and then war had split Francophone Canada, as it had split the Anglophone community in the Province; for every ultramontane like Étienne-Paschal Taché, who declared his loyalty to the crown publicly from the steps of Notre-Dame de Québec - with the archbishop in attendance - and tried to rally the militia where the British flag still flew, there was a patriote like Louis-Joseph Papineau, pursuing the age-old dream of “Canadien” nationalism and rallying his followers, in many cases under the green-white-red tricolor of the ’37 rising. As in any such situation, the vast majority of the French-speaking population of the Province, some 900,000 men, women, and children, living largely in the historically French territory of Lower Canada, also known as the Canada East District, wanted little more than to be left alone. The realities of war, however, forced increasing numbers of Canadiens – and, for that matter, Anglophones whose community showed similar divisions between English and Irish, town and country – to make a decision.

California Dreaming (5)

Welcome to the final section of this mammoth examination of the British assault on San Francisco. If you'd like, check out parts 1, 2, 3,or 4; alternatively, press on for the epic conclusion.

California Dreaming (4)

For reasons of length, what was intended to be the final part of this examination has been split into two halves. Apologies if this seems like dragging it out! I didn't originally think the whole thing would take more than two posts. However, not only did there prove to be more wrong with the TL than I'd anticipated, but showing what was wrong needed more words and sources than I'd anticipated.

This first half (part 4) will deal with the remainder of the battle at sea, and the second (part 5) will deal with the landing. Although I don't think you need to review the previous sections to understand this one, you're more than welcome to do so: check out parts 1, 2 or 3, or the section dealing with the Pacific Northwest.