Lakes a-Mercy! (2)

The purpose of this post was to deal with the human factors of the Lakes war. Unfortunately, in researching it I detected another issue with the material factors which I felt I should pick up on. Rest assured, we'll get to the people in just a moment.

Lakes a-Mercy! (1)

The problems with TFSmith's treatment of the war on the Great Lakes have been touched on briefly, but we will consider them in greater detail in this post (and, based on current expectations, a follow-up).

Colley-wobbles

TFSmith is very keen on 'the realities of time and distance,' as he terms them (here, here, here, here, here, and here). As we are starting to learn, however, he does not always accurately reflect these realities himself. For instance:

Burnished Rows of Steel, chapter 1 part 1 (December 1861)

“Especially with a fire-eater and student of war like yourself in charge, Colley, eh what?” interjected the colonel. “I mean, Pope, here he is at Staff College, half-way through what is supposed to be a two year course in five months,

Lieutenant General Sir William Francis Butler, The life of Sir George Pomeroy-Colley:

'quitting the Cape in January 1862, [he] arrived in England at the end of February to enter the Staff College in March, one month after the usual time of entrance.'

TFSmith's usual excuse when errors of this kind are detected is to argue that his POD is in August 1861. This does just give Colley five months in which he could have attended the Staff College. Unfortunately, as he only took the examination to enter Staff College in September 1861, it implies that Colley teleported from South Africa to Britain and was admitted to the College without sitting any exams part-way through a year.

Of course, even if TFSmith had done enough research to find out when Colley had joined the Staff College, he would probably still have ensured that Colley would have made it to the battlefield. After all, Colley was 'an illustrative case study of the state of British Army professional training and education in the Victorian Era' and 'an exemplar of the professional British Army officer corps' (c.f. here and here).