Hurry All To Sea

In the April chapter, TFSmith states:

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. Various merchant steamers and fast steam launches were available for conversion as well, as rams or spar torpedo boats if nothing else, and those were going ahead. In addition, a number of cruisers had set out from New England’s ports as commerce raiders, to join those already at sea; 20 of them, a mix of warships and converted merchantmen, were operating in the Atlantic by the end of the month.

Quite apart from the previously discussed issue with the incredibly fast conversion of the Boston (which has been converted in less time than it took the British to sail reinforcements across the Atlantic in BROS) the list of secondary ships has many problems.







The description of San Jacinto as a 12 and Wachusett as a 10 is correct, as are the six “90 day gunboats” - though several of those named actually took a lot longer than 90 days to build, with the Aroostook taking about seven months from laying down to commission.
The “double enders” is where things start to come apart. Of those listed:
The Conemaugh was not launched until the first of May and did not commission until July.
The Genesee was launched on the second of April, but did not commission until July.
The Mahaska was already launched, but did not commission until the 5^th of May.
The Maratanza was commissioned on the 12^th of April; this one is correct.
The Sebago is also correct, as she was commissioned on the 26^th of March.
The Sonoma was launched on the 15^th of April and did not commission until July.
The Tioga entered commission on the last day of June.
Out of the seven Double Enders, only two would have been available; a very poor mark. This means that, out of the sixteen ships described as being in commission in this section, only ten would have been available.


Of the ships listed for conversion, the Ossipee and Housatonic were already launched (and would be hard to modify to take armour); the Canandaigua and Sacramento were still on the ways as of the divergence, so would be possible to modify (though would likely not commission until 1863 at the earliest).
The Nahant and Nantucket are Passaic-class ironclads; as these appear to be the OTL class, ordered based on lessons learned from the first Monitor, they should be barely started. (In reality Nahant launched in October and Nantucket in December.) In a later list the only Monitor-type vessels are the Monitor herself and '10 larger semi-sisters of Monitor, the Passaic class', thus showing that they are indeed Passaic class.
The mention of merchant steamers is probably valid, though the mention of rams is questionable and spar torpedoes is utterly mad – the spar torpedo was not invented until late 1862, in another country (accounts differ on whether Russia or the Confederacy demonstrated a working torpedo first) and for TFSmith to have them as a major feature of the Union fleet in early 1862 is flagrant cheating. If nothing else it raises the question as to why the spar torpedo was not considered as a way to deal with the Virginia.
The listing of commerce raiders is essentially a smokescreen. The author gives no details as to what these ships are beyond that they exist; in fact a successful commerce raider has some quite specific properties required of it, including speed and the ability to sail long distances without using much coal. (The most successful of the Confederate commerce raiders were all built in Britain, and were faster than almost any ship the Union possessed – only the Vanderbilt was quicker.) Particularly objectionable is the mention of “warships” (without further clarification) among the twenty cruisers supposedly operating in the Atlantic by the end of April; a major problem as TFSmith has already resorted to commissioning unlaunched ships to provide his harbour defence forces.




This is particularly egregious compared to the treatment of the British. The US Navy pulls together about three dozen ships in this section, from a combination of unspecified merchant conversions and ships not launched until July; the British have somehow lost half their extant, already-proven fleet behind a very large sofa.