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.

In Chapter 4 part 1, TFSmith manages a twofer. The naval battle in this section has a lot of its own problems, which we will consider at a later stage. However, the very presence of the British ships is an error. The two problematic ships are 'the battleship HMS Edgar (89), Capt. George P. Mends' and 'the corvette HMS Racoon (22), Capt. William C. Chamberlain' We are told that 'The steam liner and the corvette had come out from the Mediterranean', but this is impossible.

Though Racoon was assigned to the Mediterranean station in the Navy List of 20 December 1861, it was brought home as part of the preparations for a Trent War. She arrived at Spithead on 7 January, so that the Royal Navy's shore establishments could evaluate the ship. They had not yet decided whether to refit her quickly for temporary service, or to transfer her crew to a ship working up from the steam reserve. Meanwhile, Edgar left Spithead for Lisbon on 1 January and arrived there on the 7th. Ironically, the two ships probably passed each other on their respective voyages. TFSmith likes to use the catch-all excuse of his POD being in August 1861 when caught out in an error, but there is a bigger error that he has to deal with.

We are told explicitly that Edgar and Racoon 'had come out from the Mediterranean...to convoy Terror from Bermuda', and that they are doing so when they meet USS Mississippi in mid-April 1862. However, even after the release of tensions over the Trent, Edgar was still sent to the West Indie- she sailed for Port Royal on the 30th of January. Either Racoon and Edgar did not come out together, one or both had been waiting at Bermuda for months, or Terror should have been at Halifax long ago. This is an artifact of  TFSmith preventing the British from making any preparations for war between January and April.

Even when we look just at station assignments, TFSmith makes mistakes. Consider this summary of where TFSmith thinks certain ships are, and on the arrogance of saying ‘you’re welcome’ after providing a list littered with errors and omissions.

Historically, HMS Geyser was to be sent to Vancouver on 15 January (Times, 1 January 1862) and was in Portsmouth coaling (Times, 7 January 1862) when news arrived that the Union had backed down. However, Geyser is not present in TFSmith's list of ships, and never appears actually in the timeline. When we consider that the Southeast America station includes HMS Satellite (despatched per Times of 24 December 1861) and HMS Stromboli (still in Britain as of Times 8 January 1862), it becomes clear why Geyser is missing. In the Navy list of March 1862, Geyser appears with the Channel Fleet, where it had been reassigned after the de-escalation of tensions meant it was no longer required for the Pacific. That same list shows Satellite and Stromboli with the Southeast America station. What this shows is that TFSmith read the 'accurate' official source, the March 1862 list, and took it as gospel. His failure to do any further research meant he deleted Geyser from the timeline, whereas in reality it should have arrived on the Pacific station around the time he has the Union declaring war.

There are other ships missing from the Southeast America station. HMS Ardent and HMS Oberon are both present in the December 1861 list; both Ardent and Oberon are still present in the March 1862 list, yet neither appear in TFSmith's summary. He also misses HMS Antelope, among others, from the West Africa station. Though he excludes the many Crimean-war era gunboats present on each station from his list, these ships were not gunboats.

Given how convinced he was that the Navy Lists were the authoritative sources of all information, there seems no valid reason for these ships to be missing. Do these ships contribute to his overall under-counting of Royal Navy ships? Regardless, their exclusion goes to further confirm that TFSmith has based his confected timeline on a unstable foundation of inadequate research.

The biggest error, however, is not a ship that is absent, but a ship that is present. HMS Calypso was one of the few remaining sail ships on active duty in the Royal Navy. Perhaps in an attempt to make the Union navy and its considerable contingent of sail vessels seem more modern, TFSmith keeps HMS Calypso in service long after it should have been decommissioned. In July 1862, Calypso is at Panama; in the spring of 1863, it is still in service in the Pacific. Yet TFSmith should know from the navy list that Calypso had been ordered home from the Pacific as of December 1861. In fact, it arrived in Spithead on 7 January 1862- well before his changes to the TL should take effect. Had TFSmith not been so arrogant as to reject newspapers as a valid resource, he might have realised this.