An Old Man's War

TFSmith's use of Wolseley to pronounce many of his opinions of officers in both the British and American armies tends to make the man look a little bit biased.

A Webb of deception

Two of the largely ahistorical ironclads which TFSmith has appear in Burnished Rows of Steel are the New York and New Jersey, each possessing forty guns. These are in fact what in our world were the Re d'Italia and the Re de Portogallo (known colloquially as the "Webb Frigates"), but completed much sooner (in service by December 1862, instead of the historical date around September 1864).
This early completion date poses a number of problems.

Passport to Inaccuracy

While we have touched extensively on the naval issues on Lake Ontario before, one small detail has come to my attention recently.

At the "Battle" of Limestone Ridge, it is mentioned that the Hamilton Naval Company is attached to the militia order of battle, meaning the men of that company were apparently shooting it out with American troops on the Niagara frontier. However, we know from the flashback in Chapter 10 Pt. 1, that apparently the ship operated by the Hamilton Naval Company, the Passport, is being converted at Kingston.

Now, from the text the naval action there apparently takes place in May as well. This raises the question, how can the naval company be two places at once?

The simple answer is, they can't. The author, either not realizing (more likely not caring) about his mistake blithely rolls on with it. What is interesting, however, is that the author seems to understand he's underselling the Canadians. He could only know about Harbottle through either seeing him in the 1867 militia list he uses as his base, or by reading about the Fenian raids.

Anything beyond a cursory glance would have led the author to realize that in 1862 no less than six naval and marine companies were formed for service on Lake Ontario (the Garden Island Naval Comapny not being formed until January 1863) versus the precisely zero pre-existing naval militia companies or militia infrastructure on the American side.

What this suggests of course is that the author has deliberately chosen to underrate, and reassign, the Anglo-Canadian capabilities on the lakes, for the express purpose of making an easier American victory. Or, the author is lazy. You decide.

Brittania Waives the Rules

TFSmith has the following to say about the British merchant marine:

Haiti, wait a minute...

Burnished Rows of Steel, Chapter 5 Part 1:

The Executive Mansion
Washington City, District of Columbia
May, 1862
...
“The Spanish, apparently not content merely to take over Santo Domingo, are threatening war with Hayti; we of course, have encouraged the Haytians to resist to the utmost,” Seward said, with a grin of his own.

How did the Union encourage a government with which they had no diplomatic relations?

The United States recognized Hayti (Haiti) on July 12, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln commissioned Benjamin F. Whidden was to act as a U.S. diplomatic representative to Hayti under the title “commissioner and consul-general.” ... Diplomatic relations and the American Legation in Port-au-Prince were established on October 1, 1862, when Commissioner and Consul General Benjamin F. Whidden presented his credentials to the Government of the Republic of Haiti.

Of course, it probably never occurred to TFSmith that the wonderful, egalitarian, totally 100% not racist United States would refuse to recognise a country because its leaders were black. He probably doesn't even know that the US similarly refused to recognise Liberia until September 1862.

(Needless to say, horrendously racist discriminatory aristocratic white supremacist Britain recognised Haiti in 1825, and Liberia on its independence in 1847.)

Feet of Clay Work

To turn a passion for music into a career is a rare achievement; to write a song that is remembered ten years down the line is an even rarer one. Calixa Lavallée not only achieved both of these, but also the exceptional achievement of having his song was adopted as his country's national anthem 100 years after it was first written. Yet, in Burnished Rows of Steel, Calixa Lavallée is demnstrated to be possibly the worst songwriter in recorded human history - and also, ironically enough, very bad at French.

The Players Are Set

In Chapter 18 Part 1, we have an interesting chapter. The meat of which is supposed to be the Battle of Fort Pillow, which has apparently been under siege or the threat of siege since early 1862. Though apparently everyone has been tied up in a somewhat stalemated 'siege' of Nashville.

In any case, the various dispositions of the armies and river fleets aren't nearly so interesting as another apparent example of the author's laziness.

This chapter has a brief section relating to the film The Horse Soldiers, which in our history was produced in 1959, but in this story is produced in 1939, but more on that in a moment. The section takes place by opening with a reference to IMDB (yes, the Internet Movie Database, founded in 1990, clearly a difference of 129 years leads to this) talking about the film. The movie is referring to a story 'loosely' based on General Bufords's "Tennessee Raid" in the summer of 1863. Historian Bridget Catton relates:

"[Buford] drove through western and central Tennessee, tearing up railroads and upsetting [rebel General] Van Dorn's troop deployments before reaching US-held Nashville. The climactic battle scene at the “Palmyra Meeting House,” where the Buford character, General James “Jim” Butler (whose Tennessean antecedents are heavily played up) faces his brother John, a rebel cavalry officer, is based on the fighting at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, between Buford’s division and that of the rebel general Nathan Bedford-Forrest.

While all well and good for an alternate history section, the authors sheer laziness in writing this section boggles the mind.

Covering blushes

Burnished Rows of Steel, Chapter 3 Part 2:

the covered face, a half-built but existing earthwork that defended the shore approaches to Montgomery... Unfortunately for the British, however, Parrott had emplaced several rifled guns in embrasures cut into the covered face

Textbook of Fortification and Military Engineering, for use at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, Part I (1877):

Counterguards are works intended to protect the faces of bastions... When they are so narrow as to be suitable only for musketry they are termed couvrefaces; such narrowness has the advantage that the besieger has no room to establish breaching batteries upon them.

Of course, you can tell through observation that the covered face is too narrow to mount artillery. However, in light of TFSmith's pretensions to academic status, it's nice to know that a covered face is by its very definition too narrow to mount artillery.

MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN

One of the secondary focuses of this blog is on smugly drawing attention to the continual instances  where additional primary evidence piles up in favour of our positions, or where secondary sources confirm what we have already noted. In light of that - and also of the complaint that there is insufficient peer-reviewed material covering this topic - it seems only appropriate to juxtapose the following two quotes:

Galena the truth

TFSmith does not understand how blockades work.

Worse, he does not understand even the physical reality of what a blockade is composed of. Ships.

Irregular Quality Writing

What does it take to make someone as good as a British regular?

The answer, it transpires, depends on who you are.

Not-so-Great Yarmouth

Given USS Vanderbilt's remarkable ability to circumvent the British blockade while causing the ships of the Royal Navy to run aground, her blockade running career could theoretically have lasted forever. Though TFSmith decides to end this career prematurely, he does so at the cost of one of the Royal Navy's most powerful frigates - a typical instance of a concession to reality being used to spite the British.

Galveston Beached

Galveston Bay made the claim here that:

You accuse him here, where he can make no response or defense. You did not dare do so in the forum, as after all on that website there are consequences for false accusations. 

Let's sort this out, shall we? TFSmith is perfectly welcome to come here and defend the complete rubbish he wrote. There is absolutely nothing preventing him from doing so. If, for whatever reason, he has retired from alternate history, that's no reason we can't discuss his work in his absence. People discuss the work of others in their absence all the time. For instance, on 26 August 2016 Robcrauford described his rifles thesis as his 'final foray into alternate history'. Despite this, on 15 October 2016 we find one Galveston Bay begging TFSmith to disprove the thesis- a futile plea, in light of the lamentable fishing expedition described here. 

Furthermore, when I was temporarily and incorrectly banned from AH.com, Galveston Bay was perfectly prepared to explain to onlookers how I was 'sarcastic,' 'mean spirited,' showed no 'particular willingness to debate,' provided 'facts [which] have been rebutted or questioned frequently and routinely', and was 'hijacking the thread.' How exactly I was to make a 'response or defence' to these accusations, having been banned from the boards, is unclear.

Galveston Bay also points out that 'he [i.e, me] has been ignoring me for two years (EDIT: much of the last year)'. What he fails to recognise is that ignoring someone means you cannot see their posts, and therefore 'can make no response or defence' to them. Did that stop him from replying to my posts during that time? Of course not. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that having the right of response matters only in certain cases- namely, those people who agree with Galveston Bay.

With that first sentence settled, let's move on to the suggestion that we were afraid of the consequences of accusing TFSmith of plagiarism on AH.com. As it happens, I'm unaware of there actually being any consequences for false accusations on AH.com. For instance, here's TFSmith accusing Robcrauford of being a sockpuppet, an accusation on which he doubled down despite it being demonstrably untrue. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to have counted as one of the nine strikes he accrued in his time on the boards.

Of course, it wasn't the fear of consequences that prevented us from accusing TFSmith of plagiarism on AH.com. For one thing, Saphroneth and I didn't realise he'd plagiarised text until 22 February 2017, several months after TFSmith's June 2016 banning. Alert readers will note that the very reason we set up this blog (on 23 February 2017) was because you can't discuss the work of banned members on AH.com in the kind of detail we wanted to do. In fact, discussing his timeline on AH.com would actually have denied him the right of response- because, as we all know, a man who makes accusations of sockpuppetry against others would be far too upright to register a sockpuppet himself. 

Despite the limitations on doing so, it's worth noting that Saphroneth actually has, in passing, accused TFSmith of plagiarism on AH.com. He received no punishment for doing so, because the accusation is true. In fact, TFSmith's reputation as a plagiarist was well-established on AH.com even before he got banned. For instance, here's Calbear warning him for plagiarism and TFSmith admitting it was for ripping off published sources. Galveston Bay may well have missed this, despite posting frequently in the dedicated BROS thread, so it's good to bring it to his attention.

In conclusion, then, all I can say is that if Galveston Bay really wants us to make these criticisms more accessible by posting them on a forum TFSmith will never again be able to contribute to, he should speak to the moderators on our behalf. It seems a little odd that he'd want us to bring our critique to a wider audience at the same time he's trying to have us shut down. Nevertheless, we stand by every criticism made so far: nobody has managed to disprove them, not even Galveston Bay himself.

Petty Officers

Some write alternate history because they wish things were different; others write alternate history as a way of exploring what actually happened. And some write alternate history to spite other people who like alternate history. For instance, the encounter at Block Island we have described previously took place in June 1862, but is placed in a chapter that otherwise takes place in November 1862. There is absolutely no reason for this to be told in flashback- so why was it put here?