Fishy Ironmongery (Ironclads I)

Ironclads – time and motion

The question of ironclads is an important one, in any discussion of the period. TFSmith, however, appears bound and determined to give us only just sufficient information to realize he is operating far from OTL.




The following tidbits of information are given about the Union's ironclad program:



December 1861

“And the new ironclads?” Lincoln asked.

“The two large broadside ships are under construction at Boston and Philadelphia; the two smaller ships, the small sloop at Mystic and the special ship at Greenpoint, are both well under way as well. The New York ship should be ready first; the constructors are also surveying the large hull in New York, but that vessel would require substantial re-design.”

This is the first warning. The ships in question are, in order, the Boston (the conversion of Franklin, which is not actually being built at Boston according to later information; it is possible that the name is intended to keep continuity), the New Ironsides, the Galena and the Monitor. The “large hull” in New York is the Stevens Battery, never finished.



Of these ships, the one which should raise alarms is the Boston. It is completely ahistorical, and there is no visible driver of the change – it would take a separate design to the US Navy's Ironclad Board.






In Feb 1862, we are shown the just-launched Monitor (which is described as 172 feet long, instead of the real 179.)

The briny smell of the sea rose, even in winter, and gulls and mergansers fought over what they could find at the shoreline, their squawking echoed by the rattle and slam of machinery ashore. Noise echoed from the Continental yard’s workshops and the barnlike ship house where the object of inspection had been housed, only the week before. Inside, iron rang as a new keel was laid, replacing the one that now hung, unseen, a few feet below the water.

The new-laid keel appears to be ahistorical. The Passaic class, the versions of Monitor which were updated in accordance with war experience, did not begin launching until August. Nevertheless, this is probably understandable – though the resultant ship would not be a Passaic and would be roughly three months behind Monitor in availability.

“Vell, she is going to empress and admonis’ those who ‘tink der only vay to build an ironclad steam batt-ree is by spending three-and-a-half millions on vat amounts ta’ a ship of the line,” the Swede, Captain John Ericsson, artillery officer and naval architect, half-visionary and half entrepreneur and all gadfly, said emphatically.

This is a real historical misconception Ericsson held, but it is not corrected (in reality the Warrior cost about £380,000, roughly $2M, and the Defence cost £250,000; conversely the entire Aetna class cost £300,000 for all five, thus pegging each one as about the cost of the Monitor.)






In April we are told:

In addition, Flag Officer Charles Wilkes commanded the newly-designated North Atlantic Squadron in Boston, one of the four new squadrons formed in the winter of ’61-62 for home service. The 63-year-old New Yorker had been commissioned in 1818, and had a distinguished if stormy career in the Navy, including the action with HMS Rinaldo in the Bahama Channel. Wilkes, drawing on the resources of the navy yards in Boston (Charlestown) and Portsmouth (Kittery), was rapidly assembling a force designed for coast defense. Wilkes’ charge was to maintain control of Massachusetts and Cape Cod bays, as well as contest the coastal waters north to the Isles of Shoals and the entrances to the Piscataqua and Penobscot. His resources were limited, however: the largest ship in the squadron was the new ironclad sloop USS Boston (19), converted on the ways at Portsmouth from the never-commissioned steam frigate Franklin to a design by her captain, Cdr. Joseph B. Smith, an ordnance specialist and son of Flag Officer Joseph Smith, chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks.

Joseph B. Smith should be in command of the Congress, a sailing ship which by this time OTL had suffered a terminal encounter with the Virginia. Of course, in this TL the Virginia was burned on the stocks by Burnside's army; however, Smith certainly did not have the idea for the Boston OTL, or if he did it was not accepted by the Ironclad Board (his flash of ahistorical brilliance would have had to come before his OTL death). This is two examples of cheating at once.
The conversion of the Franklin to Boston is also incredibly fast – assuming the same timing of the Ironclad Board's deliberation as OTL (October 1861), for this ship to be in commission it must have been converted from a housed-over hull in six months. This is far faster than any comparable ship in another navy – the Royal Oak was ordered to be converted to ironclad a year into her construction (June 1861), was launched fifteen months after that (September 1862) and did not enter commission until April 1863. The real Franklin, meanwhile, was launched in September 1864 and did not commission until 1867. Her machinery was not ordered until November 1863 OTL – an immediate effort would perhaps get her in the water, unfinished and unarmoured, in ten months. She should not even be afloat by April 1862; not unless her conversion was started in June 1861. This is quite apart from the question of cost – the US Congress appropriated $1.5 million, and the conversion of Franklin into Boston appears to be fast and good (so can't exactly be cheap).
Even the Virginia, built on an already-previously-used ship's hull with most of the work already done (including undamaged machinery) was ordered in July and completed the following February (seven months).

Wilkes broke his flag aboard Boston, which joined the steam sloops San Jacinto (12) and Wachusett (10) in commission, along with six of the new screw steamers known as “90 day gunboats” – Aroostook, Chocura, Huron, Marblehead, Penobscot, and Sagamore, each with five guns – and seven of the new sidewheel “double-enders,” the Conemaugh, Genesee, Mahaska, Maratanza, Sebago, Sonoma, and Tioga, each with eight guns. Four more steam sloops under construction – Ossipee, Housatonic, Canandaigua, and Sacramento - were being converted to broadside ironclad gunboats, along the lines of Boston; in addition, two ironclad turret gunboats, Nahant and Nantucket, modeled on Ericson’s Monitor, were under construction and being rushed forward.

Of the listed sidewheel “double enders”, only two should be in commission.



The Franklin was 5,170 tons displacement before conversion; the sloops listed were historically about 1,200 to 1,300 long tons (except for one which was 2,100 long tons) and so it should not be possible to construct broadside ironclad gunboats “along the lines of” Boston – the weight disparity is too extreme. The ironclad sloops of this size constructed by the British were not very successful (and took 1-2 years).


The Nahant and Nantucket were Passaic class ironclads OTL; the use of the name is probably all right, but (since the limiting factors were guns and armour and the Passaics were very rushed) they should not be available before December 1862.





During May we see this on the Lakes:

Michigan had been joined by the casemate ironclad USS Missouri (720 tons, 14, commissioned 1862: Acting Cdr. Albert Briggs), converted from the hull of the first iron-built screw steamer laid down for the lakes, the SS Merchant, on the ways at Bidwell & Banta.

It is not stated what guns or armour the Missouri carries, but they cannot be very heavy ones – the real Merchant had a deadweight cargo capacity of 860 tons.



We also have:

From there, as the crisis with the British expanded, Du Pont was the natural choice to command on the Delaware. Du Pont flew his flag in the big steam frigate Wabash (46), Cdr. C.R.P. Rodgers; with her masts and yards removed, she had enough reserve buoyancy to mount heavier artillery than her ocean-going peers and carry some extemporized armor, as a so-called “chain-clad.” The squadron also included ten smaller sloops and gunboats, including five of the new Unadilla class, as well as seven converted merchant steamers, including the fast screw steamer Cuyler. Along with Rodgers, Du Pont’s officers included Captain Garrett J. Pendergrast, 59, serving at the Navy Yard, who was pushing forward the construction of a half dozen ironclads of various types at the Delaware Bay yards. A nephew, Austin Pendergrast, had died aboard Congress when she was sunk off the Chesapeake; the Anglo-American conflict had a near-immediate impact across many “Navy” families.

The half-dozen ironclads of various types are not specified. We also see that the Congress has indeed been sunk, but not with her OTL captain (Joseph B. Smith).
The mention of chainclads is intended to imply that there was useful protection to be had; the real chainclad (Kearsarge) was armoured that way simply to prevent shot from destroying upright boilers, and in action the chains were quickly broken up.



If the US was going to convert a wooden ship to an ironclad, the obvious pattern is Roanoke (though this took about a year, thus making it clear why TFSmith prefers flights of fancy.)






Moving on to June:

He was ordered west to take command of the emergency “timberclad” gunboats and the new riverine ironclads, designed by naval constructor Samuel Pook at the insistence of Commander John Rodgers, first naval officer assigned to the western waters flotilla in 1861, and being built by contractor James Eads at yards in Missouri and Illinois. Rodgers’ relative low rank had hindered the fight for material to finish all seven of “Pook’s Turtles,” but Foote’s presence helped move the ships forward. By the spring of 1862, with the possibility of British involvement looming, Foote’s squadron included the seven new “City” class ironclads, three large ironclads converted from existing river steamers, a dozen of the “timberclad” gunboats and steam rams, and some three dozen mortar scows, each equipped with a large seacoast mortar and capable of being moved from point to point by towboats. By the middle of June, the naval force had been augmented by the Army’s “ram fleet” under Colonel Charles Ellet, and was organized as follows:



Western Waters Flotilla, United States Navy
Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, USN
Flag Lieutenant S. B. Luce, USN
Cincinnati (14 guns) - Cdr. R.N. Stembel (flagship)



1st Division – Captain Samuel F. Carter, USN (Essex) (Acting Brigadier General, USV)
Essex (6) - Cdr. W.D. Porter
Carondolet (14) – Cdr. H. Walke
St. Louis (14) - Lt. L. Paulding
Louisville (14) - Lt. Benjamin M. Dove



2nd Division – Captain William Nelson, USN (Benton) (Brigadier General, USV)
Benton (16) - Lt. S. L. Phelps
Pittsburgh (13) - Lt. Egbert Thompson
Mound City (13) - Cdr. A.H. Kilty
Cairo (13) - Lt. N.C. Bryant



3rd Division – Lt. William Gwin, USN (Tyler, flag)
Conestoga (4 guns) – Lt. J. Biship
Lexington (6) - Lt. J.W. Shirk
Tyler (7) - Lt. William Gwin
Queen of the West (3) – Col. Charles Ellet, Jr.(flag)
Monarch (3) – Lt. Col. Alfred W. Ellet
Switzerland (3) – Master David Milliard



4th Division – Capt. Henry Maynadier, USN (Lancaster, flag)
Lancaster (1) – Master William Mix
Transports and mortar boats



The total number of guns in the squadron, not counting the mortar boats, was 144; the ironclad Eastport and five more steam rams were being refitted at St. Louis.

This is the battle of Memphis. In reality the Union force at the battle (sourced from Wikipedia) was:
Benton
Louisville
Carondelet
Cairo
St. Louis
Queen of the West
Monarch



So the additional ships are
Cincinnati (OTL sunk at this time)
Essex (OTL undergoing upgrades)
Pittsburgh
Mound City (OTL undergoing repairs)
Conestoga
Lexington
Tyler
Switzerland
Lancaster



It appears that Queen of the West, Monarch and Switzerland have been ahistorically armourclad, though the text is unclear. It also appears that the Cincinnati and Mound City have contrived to get past Fort Pillow without being shot at – a very odd occurrence – and that the Essex has been accelerated over OTL. With all these ironclads being accelerated, one gets the sense that perhaps the Union was on a peace footing OTL.
We also - as per usual - do not hear what guns the ironclads are provided with. An ironclad with a long 24 pounder is a very different prospect from an ironclad with an 11 inch Dahlgren gun!
Odder still is that the Eastport is at St Louis – OTL she was converted at Cairo IL into an ironclad ram and did not sail from there until August.



July passes without incident, but in August:

By August, however, the two forces – Williams’ Army of Canada and Pennefather’s Army of New Brunswick – each had three large infantry divisions, each of three brigades, plus a cavalry brigade and army-level artillery, engineers, and services. More cavalry brigades, of a mix of regulars and Canadian militia, were being organized to bring the mounted troops in Williams’ army to the strength of a division. The remains of Russell’s two brigades from Montreal, being brought up to strength with volunteers and militia from the Canadian provincial establishment, garrisoned the cities of Quebec and Three Rivers. A separate Royal Marine brigade was assigned to Smart’s squadron, for operations on the Maine coast. Dacres, as Milne’s second-in-command in Edgar, was in overall command of the naval forces in the north, based on Halifax. Smart’s forces continued to blockade Portland, Portsmouth, and Massachusetts Bay, and support the Army in Maine; his flag was in Revenge. Cochrane’s ironclads, including the flagship Warrior, remained in Casco Bay; part of the decision to attack on Penobscot Bay was to seize a more sheltered anchorage for the big ships. Kingcome had been sent north in Sutlej to take command on the Saint Lawrence. The forces on the station included those that had been sent out in the spring for the blockade and to support the attack on Portland; some reinforcements, made up of newly-commissioned ships or vessels pulled from the reserve and manned with a mix of regulars, reservists, and merchant seaman, had come out to Halifax; most notably, these included four more ironclads, two more mortar frigates, and 16 of the small 250-ton river and coastal gunboats built for the Crimea. Split into two flotillas, eight – under Lt. John B. Creagh, in Britomart – had been assigned to Kingcome’s squadron, based on Quebec City; the other eight, led by Lt. Edward Poulden, in Stork, were serving on Penobscot Bay. Poulden’s own Stork, accompanied by Sandfly, had probed the Penobscot and were turned back by Fort Knox; Poulden had steamed down to Belfast

The ironclads mentioned are a bit late – the British had planned to construct six new ironclads for the Canadian lakes and inland seas, to turn over to the Royal Navy 90 days after the placement of the contract (which was to be done immediately on outbreak of war). The delay is due to the PoD.
In a TL where the Union is permitted to make retroactive preparations reaching back to the summer of 1861, however, in order to get Boston into the water, one would perhaps expect the British to have put into action preparations that had already been made.
The gunboats are also far too small in number. There has been enough time to build entirely new ones, let alone put into service some of the 100-plus gunboats the Royal Navy had in reserve, and only mortar frigates are mentioned (the British have dozens of Crimean mortar gunboats).



By September:

The older paddle-wheel steamers, armed and commissioned merchant steamers, and new-build ships whose completions had been rushed forward, even in competition with the new ironclads being built or converted from existing ships, could fill in some of the gaps; but these same vessels were equally needed to hunt American cruisers, escort troop and trade convoys, and carry dispatches to far-flung commands as yet unconnected by submarine cables. The simple truth was even the British Navy’s resources were not unlimited; active naval operations in the Atlantic and Pacific, and the need to support those squadrons and the troop and supply convoys plowing back and forth across the world, including the sailing ships carrying coal, provisions, and common stores to the blockading squadrons stretched from the Chesapeake to the Gulf of Maine, had pushed the Royal Navy to the limit. The Confederacy, of course, could supply little beyond water and some food, and then only to those British ships that called at the ruined port of Norfolk or farther south; the closest supply sources for the blockaders actually in British hands were the Maritime colonies or the West Indies, and even there, beyond the basics of coal, water, and provisions, supplies were close to non-existent, especially given the needs of the army and naval squadron on the Saint Lawrence, and the garrisons in the West Indies and Bermuda.

The first mention of a problem with priority in completion is not American, but British. There is also a mention of the destruction of Norfolk, and that the Union apparently subsequently abandoned it. (Presumably they did a lot more damage the second time.)
The mention of the needs of the blockaders is clear, but there is no clear indication of where raiding Union ships are getting their coal – all the good coaling stations are British.

At home, Britain’s huge fleet of steam line-of-battleships, built in the 1850s to counter France and both impressive as such in the Channel and Mediterranean and useful as flagships on the North American station, were of limited use in the war Britain actually found itself waging. The vast flocks of small steam gunboats built for the Russian war, although useful in littoral operations, required great care in crossing the Atlantic, and were as vulnerable to American shore batteries in 1862 as three of their sisters had been in 1859 to the Chinese at the Taku Forts.


As additional steam ironclads, warships, and small craft commissioned into the U.S. Navy’s home squadrons, especially on the Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, and Chesapeake bays and on Long Island Sound, the usefulness of the British wooden-hulled steamers decreased, and the already leaky inshore blockade moved farther off-shore. This resulted in even more runners and raiders making it through, and only increasing the drain on the Royal Navy’s resources. Without a change in strategy, something would have to give; as noted by the historian Captain Samuel Eliot Morison in his magisterial United States Naval Operations in the Third Anglo-American War, even a navy of oil-burning steel ships, supported by a fleet train of the most modern oilers and supply ships, would have found the mission assigned to Milne and his men difficult; trying to do the same with wooden-hulled coal-burners was close to impossible.

Once more, the British are having serious trouble in putting together a fleet, while the US Navy is commissioning “additional” ironclads. This is very impressive an achievement by the US Navy, which in OTL possessed three ironclads on the US east coast (Galena, Monitor, and New Ironsides commissioning in August) with the fourth (Passaic) commissioning in November 1862.



It's also comical to say that the logistical task of maintaining a blockade off the US coast would be difficult even with ships fifty years more advanced. This is another attempt to awe the reader with logistical problems.

It was exactly that realization in the Admiralty, after the stalemates in Maine and on the Saint Lawrence, and then on the Potomac in September, that would lead to the “Battle of the Ironclads” that ended in, in glory and blood, in Upper New York Bay at the end of the year…

The reader is invited to guess who's going to win that one.



Also in September, we hear:

The river itself was controlled by the British, certainly as far south as the Archipelago of Lake Saint-Pierre; the gunboats that been shepherded across the Atlantic in the spring had proven their worth, and Lt. John B. Creagh’s little squadron of Amelia, Britomart (flag), Escort, Heron Linnet, Rose, Skipjack, and Trinculo had busily covered the flotilla of river steamers, schooners, tugs, and canallers that sustained Williams’ army. With more gunboats and four ironclads at Quebec, the Royal Navy was now more than ready to contest the Saint Lawrence. How that contest would play out, against the Americans and Canadiens, was a question many were asking, across Canada and the world.

It seems utterly amazing that it takes the Royal Navy until September to be able to contest the St Lawrence – apparently they did not bother even starting to plan until they were sure the entire lake system had melted.




September continues:

A proposal to build small ironclads in Quebec had been slowed by discussions between the Admiralty, Horse Guards, and the Citadelle over who was to pay for them; however, a class of four, smaller versions of the steam batteries built in Britain during and after the Russian War, was under construction. They were being built under the supervision of Commodore Richard Collinson, a well-known Arctic explorer, surveyor, and veteran of the riverine wars in China. Collinson, 50, had been sent to North America in 1861 to inspect defense establishments along the frontier from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Superior, but instead found himself in Quebec, trying to build ironclad warships in yards accustomed to wooden sailing ships.

The 700-ton ships, about half the displacement of the smallest British ironclads and each armed with seven 68-pounders, were to commission before the winter, but as of September, HMS Ontario and Quebec were launched but still fitting out; HMS Acadia and HMS Canada were in commission, but both, the first ships of the type to ever be built in Quebec, were still undergoing trials. Collinson was pushing the commanders of the two ironclads, Lts. Richard Bateman and Hugh R. Stewart, both transferred from Sutlej, to get upriver and through the tangled shallows of Lake Saint Pierre, but whether they could or not was an open question.

Not only have the British been idiots and spent months arguing over who is to pay for ironclads, but they are building them in Quebec rather than building them in the UK and convoying them over. If the British had started building ironclads of the Aetna type promptly in January, and with no further acceleration beyond the real historical rates of that "first ironclads ever built by the British" class, they would by now be arriving in the St Lawrence anyway. (If they had followed their plans they would have had ironclads on the Lakes by May.)
Oddly, the next time the Acadia and Canada appear they are described as having six heavy guns, not seven.
It is also only the British who are “trying to build ironclad warships in yards accustomed to wooden sailing ships” - the Union apparently has made the transition seamlessly despite having to use captured shipyards:

Montreal’s capacity to convert and build ships was rapidly consumed by the efforts the Americans and Canadiens were making over the summer; that led to Stringham and de Joinville casting eyes at the smaller but still significant boatyards in Sorel, and their efforts to use that capacity drew the attention of the British.


By September, the first two “tinclads” – USS Montgomery and USS Montcalm – were in commission at Montreal; they were 300-ton versions of the Carondelet class casemate gunboats built on the Mississippi – at less than two-thirds the size, however, they carried half the armament (seven guns, rather than 14) and had lighter armor – but, with a substantial amount of material shipped from the yards on lakes Champlain, Erie, and Ontario, they had been built in two-thirds the time as their big sisters on the Mississippi.

The guns of the Montgomery and Montcalm are not listed, but their guns are presumably very small – the Carondelet class ironclads carried four 8” guns, six 32-lber rifles and four mixed other weapons, and the Montgomery class are smaller. They also have thinner armour, which means that it must be less than two inches – practically speaking this is nothing, as the much heavier guns of the British gunboats and ironclads will go through with ease. (The Mound City was disabled when a 32 pounder shell went through her casemate.)



During the battle, however, we see:

Stringham’s Montgomery was in the lead, and even with three heavy guns facing forward from her casemate, was almost outgunned by Escort and Heron;

The heavy guns are not specified - a common problem for all of TFSmith's ship descriptions (except where he gets it wrong, such as the Britomart class). If they're 8” Dahlgrens like the Carondelets, however, this is all her heavy guns – she's simply too small to take much more weight.






This is about all there is for ironclads in the new version; the old version has more.