California Dreaming (4)

For reasons of length, what was intended to be the final part of this examination has been split into two halves. Apologies if this seems like dragging it out! I didn't originally think the whole thing would take more than two posts. However, not only did there prove to be more wrong with the TL than I'd anticipated, but showing what was wrong needed more words and sources than I'd anticipated.

This first half (part 4) will deal with the remainder of the battle at sea, and the second (part 5) will deal with the landing. Although I don't think you need to review the previous sections to understand this one, you're more than welcome to do so: check out parts 1, 2 or 3, or the section dealing with the Pacific Northwest.


The naval battle

The Royal Navy force must already be caught in a crossfire between Fort Point and Lime Point by the time that 'Bell’s squadron steamed around from their anchorage off the city proper'. The British must also have been well aware that this squadron was on its way. After all, it is 'a hot day, with a clear blue sky': if visibility is good enough for American forts to see British ships at two miles, it must also be good for British ships to see American ships at two miles. Moreover, the smoke plumes from a squadron of improvised 'chainclads' (now lacking masts), 'extemporized gunboats, converted tugs and steam launches' must have been visible well in advance of the ships themselves coming into firing range. The moment depicted would have been an opportune moment for a prudent commander to turn and sail out of the Golden Gate.

Instead, the British continue on into an even heavier crossfire. Indeed, they sail into the fire of the pre-war fortification at Alcatraz. Are we supposed to believe that they just forgot that this was there? Their only reason for braving this fire would have been to get to grips with the Union force- and yet TFSmith does not, apparently, have them commit to battle. As 'The American ships engaged from the east, steaming north in line ahead to cross the British line', we have to conclude that the British simply allowed their line to be crossed and the flagship at its head to be raked by three ships in succession.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reconstruct what might actually have gone on during the battle to see just how ridiculous the whole thing is. For instance, we are told that Devastation was 'battered at close range by guns from Fort Point and Point San Jose'. However, Anita Rock, where Devastation ultimately burns out, is more than a mile away from Point San Jose. Is this an instance of TFSmith redefining 'close range' in order to justify the damage inflicted on British ships? Or is TFSmith suggesting that Devastation steamed close to Port San Jose and then back out of the bay again? If so, why is Devastation described as being destroyed several sentences before Spencer orders a withdrawal? These questions are probably unanswerable, as TFSmith's planning for the battle likely went little further than 'Brits sail in, sink; Union gloats'.

The attached map shows, as far as is reconstructable, where the British ships must have been lost: Bacchante and Hecate on Presidio Shoal, and Devastation on Anita Rock. When set against the firing arcs of the forts, and compared with the suggested bombardment location proposed earlier, it speaks volumes not just about how monumentally stupid the British would have been to sail into the bay, but about the fundamental contempt that TFSmith has for the victims of his story.

The comparison

It should be noted that this battle is modelled extensively after the engagement at the Taku Forts, one of TFSmith's favourites, about which the historian of the Royal Navy William Laird Clowes wrote. As TFSmith acknowledges, the summarising section is a find-and-replace version of Clowes' description of the Taku Forts engagement. We are left to wonder what exactly Clowes wrote about Taku Forts, and whether - like TFSmith - he simply plagiarised his earlier descriptions in later sections.

As well as this long summary section, however, TFSmith also steals several lines from Clowes to use directly or paraphrase in his description of the battle:

It was a hot day, with a clear blue sky; and the Chinese had the range to a nicety.... By 3 P.M., the four craft inside the outer barrier had suffered severely, and were rapidly becoming disabled. The Plover had lost her gallant young commander, Rason, who was cut in two by a round shot

It was a hot day, with a clear blue sky; and the Americans had the range to a nicety... By 3 p.m., the warships on both sides had suffered severely, Bacchante, which as leader of the British squadron had taken more fire than any of her consorts, including hot shot from Fort Point, was dead in the water and burning on Presidio Shoal, where she had struck several anchored torpedoes; among her dead were Mackenzie, who had been cut in two by a round shot

Note that TFSmith deletes the reference to a British officer being gallant. Of the twelve instances where an individual is termed 'gallant' in the story, no fewer than seven refer to Union officers. Furthermore, two of the three British instances are copy-and-pasted: 'Browne, commissioned in 1846, had served gallantly at Sebastopol in the Crimea' appears in both chapter 3 part 2 and chapter 9, part 6.

Leaving aside this erasure of British heroism, the Clowes summary in itself shows how ridiculous the comparison is. Clowes' actual description of the Taku Forts was that:

The attack failed, firstly, because the narrowness of the channel, and the artificial obstructions crippled the usefulness of the ships, and, secondly, because the assault, a frontal one, was made over most difficult ground against works which were supposed, but wrongly supposed, to have been silenced; and was attempted with insufficient force. It must also be admitted that, as usual, the British were very ignorant of the exact strength and dispositions of the enemy.

Here (with changes highlighted), he is made to say that:

The attack failed, firstly, because the narrowness of the channel, and the heavy fortifications, crippled the usefulness of the ships against their American opponents, and, secondly, because the army’s assault, a frontal one, was made over most difficult ground against an enemy on their own ground; and was attempted with insufficient force. It must also be admitted that, as usual, the British were very ignorant of the exact strength and dispositions of the enemy.

For the time being, let us overlook how clunky TFSmith's insertions are - the awkward repetition of 'ground', the lack of Clowes' melodious language in the inserted phrase 'heavy fortifications', and the pointless insertion of 'their American opponents'. The inept prose may have distracted you from the fact that the 200-yard channel at the Taku Forts could certainly be considered narrow, but never the mile-wide channel at the Golden Gate. Moreover, at the Taku Forts that narrow channel was also closed by three lines of booms:

The first, or lowest, was of iron piles; the second was of heavy spars of wood, apparently moored head and stern, and cross-lashed with cables; the third consisted of large timber baulks, well cross-lashed together, tied with irons, and forming a mass about 120 feet wide and 3 feet deep.

At the Golden Gate there are apparently only a few mines scattered throughout the harbour, though of course (yet again) the British obligingly sail into these.

TFSmith could also not resist leaving in the comment about the British being 'very ignorant' about their enemy. However, at the Taku Forts, the British were ignorant of the exact strength and dispositions of the enemy because China was a closed country populated by an entirely different ethnic group. At San Francisco, intelligence gathering would be as simple as asking the British consul what had been going on, or putting a man with an Irish accent ashore one night.

The foolishness of the comparison includes the weather. We are told that it was 'a hot day, with a clear blue sky; and the Americans had the range to a nicety'. However, Rebels at the Gate gives us a drastically different picture of the typical weather in San Francisco. In the centennial celebrations of July 1876, the city's defences failed to set alight a hay scow anchored in the middle of the bay. This was not only due to the inaccuracy of the guns and the inadequate training of the defenders, but also in part down to the weather:

accuracy dropped off considerably after two miles. The time of flight from Alcatraz to Lime Point was fully seventeen seconds, and during that time the gusty winds blowing in the Gate clearly affected the accuracy of the shots.

In its defense, the Navy pointed out that... the wind, which was strong and gusty, was blowing across the line of fire... The problem with these excuses, of course, was that none of these conditions were unusual. The wind blowing through the Gate was almost always strong and gusty... The 4th of July celebration, on San Francisco Bay, held on July 3, 1876, was, in fact, a fairly telling indicator of just what might have happened if the city of San Francisco had been attacked from the sea during the Civil War

The numerical comparison is also flawed. At the Taku Forts 'the forts opened a simultaneous fire from between thirty and forty guns, ranging from 32-prs. to 8-in. pieces' while the British could only bring 28 guns to bear. At San Francisco, rather than the British being outnumbered, 'the 60 guns at Fort Point were outnumbered by the 80 the ships could bring to bear'. Moreover, no matter how you calculate the figure of 60 guns, it still includes 24pdr guns that were less powerful than the 32pdr and 8in guns that the Chinese had at the Taku Forts, and the British had as standard at both engagements.

Put simply, the comparison to Taku Forts shows not why the British should have been defeated, but why they should have won.