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.





The Hull

Historically the Re d'Italia was laid down on 21 November 1861 and launched on 18 April 1863, a time of about 17 months, after which at least fourteen more months of work (and one month of passage) were required to complete her; this means she was launched about halfway through her construction. If a similar ratio obtains here then the hull was completed in about six months, three times as fast as historically. The Re de Portogallo was not laid down until some weeks later, and did not launch until August 1863.

The Armour

The armour of the Re d'Italia was a complete hull sheath of 4.5 to 4.75 inches thick wrought iron. Producing thick wrought iron was a major bottleneck in American ironclad construction at the time, with the armouring of the Roanoke (two sides each ten feet high and 264 feet long, of about this thickness) being the major cause delaying her conversion time to about a year; with the Re d'Italia and the Re de Portogallo each having iron sides about twenty feet out of the water, the time taken to construct enough iron for the pair should have been considerably longer than the time it is shown as taking in BROS.
The alternative would be to armour the ships with multiple, much more easily produced thin layers, but this would either significantly impede protection or significantly increase weight (equivalent protection for the same area involving a rough doubling of weight, an addition of on the order of 1,000 tons).

The Engines

The Re d'Italia and the Re de Portogallo required engine reworkings when they arrived in Europe, work which was done in a French shipyard. This we can probably allow, but it is a handwave - the Union was strained to capacity as it was:

In July 1862, Fox noted that marine engine manufacturing limited the number of ironclads the Navy could build, writing that ships were begun “as fast as contracts for engines shall be made.” August brought the complaint, “The engine builders are where we fail, every establishment that can make an engine is at work but skilled labor is high, scarce and independent.” In December, “there is no work shop in the country capable of making steam machinery or iron plates and hulls that is not in full blast with Naval orders.” William H. Webb, a shipbuilder just commencing the seagoing ironclad Dunderberg, wrote in August 1862 that New York engine builders were asking “fabulous” prices.

(Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization)

This indicates that even Webb himself - the very person who is being touted as the builder of these ironclads - suffered from the bottlenecks imposed by engine acquisition and at exactly the time when these alternative ironclads would be so required. Indeed, the pair of engines actually used in the Re d'Italia and the Re de Portogallo were modified Maudslay and Field engines, installed by Novelty Iron Works, and when first used in the Re d'Italia suffered an embarrassing total engine failure on reaching full power which contributed to her running aground when the first went to sea. (Of course, the New York does not run aground.)

The Guns

Here is one of the big problems.

In reality both ships carried 32 164mm rifles, with one ship also having 6 8" rifles and the other having 6 8" smoothbores, for a total of 38 guns each.

The New York and New Jersey, however, are listed by TFSmith as 40-gun ships. This is a more numerous armament than they historically carried, which is another example of TFSmith uprating the number of guns carried by a ship (much as he did with ships such as the Mississippi and Powhatan, previously examined, or the Niagara).

A possible motive for his doing this would be to match Warrior in number of guns (the Warrior possessing a total of forty guns) - though the Warrior is simply a larger ship than the Re d'Italia class, with about 30%-40% more displacement.

As it happens, the Union did have guns similar in size to those for which the ships were designed - the 6.4" Parrott and the 8" Parrott - but these guns were not designed to penetrate armour. The 6.4" Parrott had a muzzle velocity of 1,080 feet per second and a muzzle energy of 810 foot tons, which is about 40.5 foot tons per inch of circumference of the projectile, while the 8" Parrott generated about 60 foot tons per inch at the muzzle. In ideal conditions (a steel shot, not used in US service at the time, and a perpendicular impact) the Warrior's armour would resist at 61 foot tons per inch, so the 8" Parrott is marginal under ideal conditions and the 6.4" Parrott has no hope of penetrating Warrior or any similar ironclad under any circumstances.

There is also a doctrinal matter to consider.
These ships are ironclad vessels in American service, and their armament should thus reflect this. Historically the Union had a general doctrinal focus on larger guns for their big ships, with ships often having batteries composed entirely of very large Dahlgren guns (e.g. the Niagara, armed solely with 11" guns) and this trend was also present with their ironclads. The smallest main battery used by any seagoing US ironclad consisted of 150 pounder Parrott guns (8") with 9" or 11" smoothbores being more common, and 15" smoothbores showing up later on. There is logic in this with ironclads; it is better to fire fewer more destructive shots that can harm an enemy ironclad.


Comparison with actual large Union vessels, ironclad and not, would tend to suggest a battery size of around ten to twenty guns would be more realistic; with the Union's historical production issues for appropriately sized rifles it seems unlikely that nearly seventy could be found just for these two ships. A smaller battery, in addition to being more realistic, would also offer the chance of using weapons heavy enough to do damage to ironclads.

The Result

Functionally what TFSmith has done is take the completed Re d'Italia and Re de Portogallo, transported them back in time two years, and added two extra guns to each so that their numbers were as big as the numbers for Warrior and Black Prince (which is to say, 40). These ships should not be appearing in service in 1862, and probably not in 1863 unless they were the primary beneficiaries of a program of concentration of all available resources from guns to engines to wrought iron armour.
Instead, they are produced almost as an afterthought, less than 10% of Union ironclad production in 1862, and not even the only large broadside ironclad frigates TFSmith places in operation.