At the first battle, we are told that:
Powhatan – disguised as a British mail packet - sank the British sidewheeler HMS Barracouta (6), Cdr. G.J. Malcom, and captured her crew, setting them ashore at Samana Bay in Spanish-occupied Hispaniola. Her largest prize in the Caribbean was the British mail steamer RMS Trent... Trent had been under escort by Barracouta; when Powhatan showed her colors and surprised the British sloop with a raking broadside, the merchantman had stood by, but her captain’s loyalty simply resulted in the steamer’s capture and scuttling, once her people were safely ashore.The first problem with this is that Powhatan is supposed to be disguised as a British merchant vessel when it sneaks up on a British warship. When Alabama surprised the Hatteras, it claimed to be a British warship. While it is understandable that the Hatteras would struggle to distinguish one nation's warships from another, the Barracouta's officers would have to be completely incompetent not to distinguish a warship from a mail packet until it opened fire.
There are more serious questions raised by this subterfuge. Why is Barracouta so completely clueless about the likely locations of British mail packets in the Caribbean as to fall for the Powhatan's subterfuge? More importantly, why is Barracouta even escorting a mail packet in the first place? Although TFSmith lives in a fantasy world where paddle steamers from the 1850s are the fastest thing afloat, in reality the Trent would almost certainly have been able to outpace not only her escort, but most of her pursuers - thus rendering the Barracouta's presence completely pointless. The cycle of idiocy is completed by the Trent's decision to simply hang around and wait to be captured, thus rendering Barracouta's sacrifice entirely pointless.
We are told that Powhatan surprises Barracouta with a 'raking broadside'. It is possible that TFSmith does not actually know what a raking broadside is, but a brief consultation with the Oxford English Dictionary would have informed him that it is:
Mil. and Naut. To fire at (a target) with a sweeping movement; to enfilade; spec. to attack (a ship) at the bow or stern and sweep the decks with gunfire (in early use more fully to rake fore and aft).However, as the report of Captain Semmes of the Alabama states, he attempted to manoeuvre into a raking position and the Hatteras prevented him, with Lieutenant-Commander Blake of the Hatteras reporting that he found the attempt suspicious. When the two engaged, they were yardarm to yardarm. There is absolutely no reason that Barracouta should allow a strange ship in an active warzone to move into a raking position, other than its captain being a complete idiot.
We have heard already how TFSmith denies the British any benefit from the ultimate sinking of the Powhatan. However, his overall treatment of the battle shows his bias towards the Union. At Cadiz, Powhatan faces the steam frigate HMS Doris and is sunk in half an hour. This is twice as long as it took USS Kearsarge to sink CSS Alabama. However, a detailed examination of the opposing forces shows that this is the most grudging of concessions,
Alabama's armament consisted of 6 32pdr guns, 1 7in Blakeley rifle firing 100lb shells, and a 8in smoothbore firing 68lb shot: this gave her a total throw weight of 360lb. Kearsarge carried 2 11in Dahlgrens with 135.5lb shells, 4 32pdr guns, and 1 30pdr Parrott rifle, which gave her a total throw weight of 429lb.
HMS Doris carried 20 10in shell guns on her main deck, which fired a 92.625lb shell; on the upper deck there were 10 32pdrs and 2 68pdr pivot guns, for a total throw weight of 2,308.5lb. USS Powhatan, meanwhile, carried 1 11in Dahlgren smoothbore and 10 9in Dahlgren smoothbores with 73.5lb shells: this represented a throw weight of 831lb.
Although the proportion of guns able to bear on the broadside varied from ship to ship, the overall disparity is clear. USS Kearsarge outmatched Alabama by 19% and sank her in an hour. Doris outmatched Powhatan by 178%, almost ten times as much, and yet took half an hour to sink her. Had Powhatan outmatched Doris by 178%, would TFSmith have had the battle last so long?
As it happens, we can make surmises on the basis of the fight between the USS San Jacinto and HMS Rinaldo. Granting San Jacinto, as TFSmith does, her post-1862 refit armament of 1 11in Dahlgren and 10 9in Dalhgrens would give her a throw weight of 870.5lb. Rinaldo, with a 68pdr pivot and 16 broadside 32pdrs, had a throw weight of 580lb. San Jacinto's advantage over Rinaldo is clearly considerably less than Doris's advantage over Powhatan. Under normal circumstances, we would therefore expect Doris to cause considerably more casualties than San Jacinto did.
However, despite sinking, Powhatan manages to lose fewer sailors not just absolutely, but proportionately. From a complement of 180 men, Rinaldo lost 14 dead and 39 wounded. If Powhatan lost men at an equivalent rate, her crew of 289 should have sustained 22 dead and 62 wounded. This would also fit with the experience of CSS Alabama at Cherbourg, where 40 of her crew of 145 were killed. Casualties of 80 would have been realistic, yet TFSmith has Powhatan lose only 41 men. On the balance of probability, this means that not a single unwounded Union sailor drowned and two-thirds of the wounded managed to survive in the water.
Powhatan's career is a litany of British idiocy. Idiots at the Admiralty ignore every historical lesson about fighting commerce raiders and make exactly the same mistakes as the inexperienced Union Secretary of the Navy. An idiot British naval captain allows the Powhatan to sail right across him and rake his ship, as an idiot British merchant navy captain waits around to be captured. Ultimately, an idiot British frigate crew spend half an hour firing at the ship and cause a pitiful handful of casualties
Once again, TFSmith's bias towards the Union prevents him from providing a realistic portrayal of a Trent war, while his readers, sharing that bias, completely fail to notice it.
Commodore Perry of course reference to the Powhatan and Susquehanna as "lame ducks" when they were in his squadron. They were slow, had high coal consumption, and both were in constant need of repairs, becoming "yard queens".
ReplyDeleteI am surprised TFS allowed her to be destroyed. Previously when USN ships went up against RN warships massively outclassing them they won in his TL.