Firstly, CSS Alabama had less than a month of wear and tear on her engines and hull before starting her raiding cruise; USS Powhatan, laid down in 1847, had been in the water for more than twelve years. We are told about the 'rapid obsolescence of the early steamers' when it comes to the British merchant fleet, and reminded that the Royal Navy includes 'obsolescent sidewheel paddle steamers'; fortunately, Powhatan proves to be only 25% less capable than a completely modern screw ship.
Secondly, Alabama was a custom-built raider, and Powhatan was not. Commander Joseph M. Ruppert, SC, USN's 'Hurry All to Sea: Union Naval Strategy to Counter Confederate Commerce Raiding' makes it clear how much difference Alabama's design made to her ability to attack commerce:
The Confederate commerce raiders, operating under sail and steam presented a formidable challenge to the Federal Navy. The Alabama and Florida, the most successful commerce raiders, were ships that proved the most difficult to capture. Alabama's First Lieutenant, John McIntosh Kell, wrote of her:
'The Alabama was built for speed rather than battle...In fifteen minutes her propeller could be hoisted, and she could go through every evolution under sail without impediment. In less time her propeller could be lowered; with sails furled, and yards braced within two points of a head-wind, she was a perfect steamer. Her speed, independent, was from ten to twelve knots; combined, and under favorable circumstances, she could make fifteen knots...we lived principally upon provisions taken from our prizes...[and] Our condenser enabled us to keep the sea for long periods, as we had to seek port only to coal.'
A shipboard condenser was an innovation at the time and was not found on many vessels. It is now difficult to envision the constraints placed on a ship roving the ocean, or one pursuing her, that had to frequently renew her supplies of drinking water. Alabama's entire crew not only had a continuous supply of fresh water, but also an iron tank in which to store the priceless commodity.
Semmes reflected on his vessel's qualities after the war. In his memoirs he wrote: 'I was much gratified to find that my new ship proved to be a fine sailor, under canvas. This quality was of inestimable advantage to me, as it enabled me to do most of my work under sail. She carried but an eighteen days' supply of fuel, and if I had been obliged, because of her dull sailing qualities, to chase everything under steam, the reader can see how I should have been hampered in my movements. I should have spent half my time running into port for fuel .... This [allowed my] keeping of the sea, for three, and four months at a time.'
A naval architect recently described Alabama as having 'good sailing qualities, given fullest rein by virtue of her lifting screw, [which] spared her precious coal, vastly extended her cruising range, and made a significant contribution to her phenomenal success. She was, in her time, as nearly perfect as a sailing ship and a steamer could be.'
Speed was considered the biggest advantage that the commerce raiders enjoyed over the pursuing Union Navy. The New York Times reported on this dilemma in two different articles in the January 1, 1863 edition:
'While high officials have denied not only the feasibility of attaining high speed, but the importance of employing it, the "290" has achieved one of the most brilliant success on record, solely and exclusively by reason of her high speed. And of all the immense and costly navy created by our Government, with the full knowledge of modern steamship improvement, not one of the vessels of the Department's own design will exceed ten knots at sea, and, according to present evidence, not more than one of their purchased vessels [i.e., U.S.S. Vanderbilt a side-wheel acquired from Cornelius Vanderbilt in March 1862] will catch the "290".'
Thirdly comes the point made by the New York Times: speed. Alabama was capable of fifteen knots under ideal circumstances, but Powhatan had never aspired to such lofty heights. Donald Canney's The Old Steam Navy, volume 1, lays out her limitations. In 1852, when brand new, she made 9.6 knots average and 10.4 knots maximum steaming without sail: setting sail added less than a knot to her average speed. TFSmith presumably read the DANFS entry which credited Powhatan with 11 knots and stopped reading there, without questioning when this figure was achieved and how sustainable it was.
Moreover, these speeds were recorded with a skeleton armament. In 1853 she carried three 10in pivot guns whose tubes weighted 86cwt, and 6 8in guns which weighed 63cwt. By November 1861, she had been given an 11in Dahlgren pivot (140cwt) and 10 9in Dalhgrens (80cwt) on the broadside: this is the armament she is listed with in Burnished rows of Steel. However, the additional weight of guns - 940cwt compared to 378cwt- to say nothing of the carriages, stores, and men needed to fight those guns would dramatically lower her speed.
To claim that a ship which barely made ten knots over a decade ago is only 25% less effective than a brand new ship which touches fifteen knots is almost incomprehensible. Yet TFSmith is consistent in ths respect. We are told that the next most successful commerce raider is Captain James Lardner of the USS Susquehanna. This is apparently an '18-gun corvette', but the real Susquehanna (Powhatan's sister ship) carried a maximum of 15 guns. As the ship features earlier in the story as a sidewheel sloop,we can conclude that the '18-gun corvette' is a figment of the author's imagination.
The two most successful historical Confederate commerce raiders were the custom-built British screw vessels CSS Alabama and CSS Florida. With TFSmith in charge, the two most successful Union commerce raiders are paddle steamers more than a decade old. Clearly, the quality of the Union's officers and men is sufficient to overcome any deficiencies in material.
As might be expected, Susquehanna shared almost all of the flaws of Powhatan. In 1853, when she was brand new, Commodore Perry had complained that 'Powhatan requires 60 days for repairs. She is as bad as the Susquehanna and that is saying enough to damn her as a war steamer... I shall nurse the two lame ducks, until I can finish my Japan business.' On her first cruise (per Canney), her average speed under sail with paddle floats removed to prevent dragging was 7.3 knots with wind directly aft and 6.5 knots with the wind on her port quarter. Using steam to turn the paddles allowed her to make 8.2 knots under sail; under steam alone, she averaged 7.5 knots. Is it likely that she improved on these figures ten years later, with a heavier armament?
This also shows us the advantages which Alabama possessed in its design. Susquehanna had taken two hours to remove her paddle floats, while the Alabama could hoist its propellor in fifteen minutes. As such, it would have been simply impossible for either Susquehanna or Powhatan to cruise effectively without burning coal, as they needed to turn their paddle wheels slowly but continually to reduce drag. Alternatively, if they chose to dismantle the paddle wheels to redue drag, this would prevent them from quickly switching from sail to steam in order to chase a prize or to escape from a pursuer, as the Alabama could. As such, the assertion that these ships would be only 25% less effective than the Alabama seems completely untenable.
This problem is compounded by the suggestion that the British would have been inept in responding to the threat of commerce raiding. In a throwaway line, we are told that ‘Shrewdly calculating the length of time necessary for word of his deeds to reach the British Government, Porter next put in at Buenos Aires and sailed for the Indian Ocean’.
Given the copy-and-paste nature of this section, it should be unsurprising that this was a tactic which Captain Semmes of the Alabama adopted. Yet Semmes himself was clear that this tactic only worked because Gideon Welles, the Union secretary of the navy, was incompetent:
The time had now arrived for me to stretch over to the Cape of Good Hope. I had been three months near the equator, and on the coast of Brazil, and it was about time that some of Mr. Welles’ ships of war, in pursuance of the tactics of that slow old gentleman, should be making their appearance on the coast in pursuit of me. I was more than ever astonished at the culpable neglect or want of sagacity of the head of the Federal Navy Department, when I arrived on the coast of Brazil, and found no Federal ship of war there. Ever since I had left the island of Jamaica, early in January, I had been working my way, gradually, to my present cruising ground. My ship had been constantly reported, and any one of his clerks could have plotted my track, from these reports, so as to show him, past all peradventure, where I was bound…Of course, though Semmes believed that 'Welles did not seem capable of learning by experience', in TFSmith's mind, no Union officer can have been incompetent. As such, the Royal Navy must fall for the exact same trick which Welles did. For him, there is no possibility that the Royal Navy's experience might have better prepared them to defend against commerce raiding than the Union, whose institutional experience focused on being the raider.
the old gentleman does not seem once to have thought of so simple a policy as stationing a ship anywhere. The reader who has followed the Alabama in her career thus far, has seen how many vital points he left unguarded. His plan seemed to be, first to wait until he heard of the Alabama being somewhere, and then to send off a number of cruisers, post-haste, in pursuit of her, as though he expected her to stand still, and wait for her pursuers! This method of his left the game entirely in my own hands.
Moreover, it does not matter that the Royal Navy already had ships on station off Brazil and in the Indian Ocean, whereas the US navy had withdrawn its small pre-war navy from its worldwide stations at the start of the war and was continually playing catch-up. These Royal Navy deployments are present only as an inconvenience to the British, drawing ships away from the blockade: they do not provide any real benefit. Even when TFSmith allows the Royal Navy to sink the Powhatan, he insists on this being after the British have thrown in the towel. God forbid that the Union war effort be impeded for a moment!
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