Eyes on the Prize

TFSmith makes great play of his academic credentials, which makes it all the more enjoyable when he reveals that he's fundamentally misunderstood a particular concept. (For an example of this, take his view of the overall balance of trade between Britain and the Union, where circumstances turned out to be the exact opposite of the way he portrayed it). This kind of revelation often comes in the shortest forms: for instance, a single phrase in chapter 11 part 1 reveals that his whole view of the Union commerce raiding operation is built on a horrendous misunderstanding.
The phrase, given in context but with emphasis added, is:

In April, she ran out again, steaming down the south shore of Long Island Sound and skirting the British blockaders off Montauk; this time, she was armed, and acted as a raider as she crossed the Atlantic, scooping up Scotia, a 109 ton Penzance collier and Northfleet, a “Blackwall Frigate” of 951 tons. Both had been run into North Sea ports by their prize crews and sold, while Vanderbilt filled up with another load of saltpetre

Why is this an issue? Because these events could not possibly have taken place. It was a univerally recognised principle of maritime law that captains did not have the authority to judge prize cases and condemn ships on his own authority. If you doubt this, bear in mind that the very war that we are talking about was provoked by  Captain Wilkes judging the case of the Trent by himself. This war was avoided because the US government realised it had no leg to stand on and chose to take the humiliating climb-down instead.

For a seizure to be legal, every prize case had to be submitted to an Admiralty court, which would consider the merits of the case and decide if the ship was lawful prize or if compensation was due to its owners. However, it was not always necessary to bring the ship to the port in which the Admiralty court would sit. Ships could, in principle, be brought into a neutral port and sold or released there when news of the judgment arrived. It is here, however, that two major and interconnected Union foreign policy blunders become pertinent.

In 1856, with the close of the Crimean War, the major European powers organised a multilateral initiative to abolish privateering. The United States, with an eye to its large merchant navy and its small establishment of purpose-built warships, refused to accept the treaty unless all non-contraband private property was protected from capture. This was a win-win situation for the United States: in the event of war with Britain, either they would be allowed to create a vast fleet of privateers to prey on British trade, or their own trade would be safe from the Royal Navy. When the rest of Europe rejected the American proposal, the United States rejected the treaty. This first blunder was not recognised as a blunder at the time, however, and the United States continued on happily until the outbreak of the Civil War.

When the Confederacy seceded, the United States realised with horror the blunder that they had committed. Because they had not signed the Treaty of Paris, there was absolutely nothing preventing the Confederacy from raising a monster fleet of privateers and sweeping Union commerce from the oceans. The Union government therefore hurriedly proclaimed its conversion to the Treaty of Paris, and pleaded with European governments to allow it to accede to its terms.

However, as so often happens, the first blunder led to a second. The Union government also begged governments which were issuing declarations of neutrality to prohibit Confederate ships from bringing prizes into their ports for adjudication. This was a reversal of previous US policy, as during their own rebellion American privateers had relied on the ability to bring prizes into neutral ports for adjudication. However, most European governments were happy to oblige the Union. In Britain, for instance, the first proclamation of neutrality on 13 May 1861 was quickly followed by a letter from Lord John Russell on 1 June 1861:

addressed, by Her Majesty's commands, to the Admiralty, Colonial, War, and India offices... interdicting the armed ship and privateers, both of the United States and of the so-called Confederate States, from carrying prizes made by them into the ports, harbours, roadsteads, or waters of the United Kingdom, or of any of Her Majesty's Colonies or Possessions abroad.

Under the influence of the American minister, the King of Hawaii similarly announced in August 1861 that 'no adjudication of prizes will be entertained within our jurisdiction'. In July 1861, the Portugese government also prevented 'the entrance of privateers and of the prizes made by privateers, or by armed vessels'.

During the American Civil War as it progressed historically, this policy was a giant boon to the Union. One only has to read Semmes' memoirs to feel his frustration, as he found the ports of Britain, Spain, and even Venezuela closed to him. This was why the Alabama had to burn her prizes rather than condemning and selling them. Moreover, when Semmes converted one of his prizes into a Confederate commerce raider under the name CSS Tuscaloosa, the British seized it on arrival in Cape Town because it had not legally been condemned as a prize. Moreover, Semmes acknowledged that this was the correct treatment of a prize when he petitioned the government to release the ship. Reversing many of its existing stances on maritime rights, and pressuring neutral governments to adopt strict interpretations of neutrality, was exactly the right approach for the Union to adopt in attempting to prosecute the American Civil War.

However, this is alternate history we are dealing with. In the event of a Trent War, the Union's stance on the admission of prizes into neutral ports would have been absolutely catastrophic to its commerce raiding efforts. Only a few enlightened individuals were able to recognise this at the time, one of them being the Union minister in Portugal James E. Harvey. He explained to Seward how, on being read a draft version of the Portguese proclamation:

I expressed my acceptance of its general scope and spirit, but expressedly demurred to the declaration... by which armed vessels are placed in the same category as privateers in regard to prizes. Although I knew it was of no practical importance to the United States under present circumstances, it was easy to foreseee that in the event of war with England or France, and with their ability to blockade our ports, that prizes taken by American ships-of-war would thus be excluded from Portugal and her possessions.

This would have been bitter irony indeed. The Union had spent most of 1861 persuading neutral powers to ban Confederate prizes from their harbours. In 1862, as a direct result of its own diplomatic efforts, British ships captured by Union commerce raiders would have been similarly banned from neutral harbours.

The Union would almost certainly prevail upon neutral powers to open their ports to prizes. However, the British request to keep them closed to both powers, as a manifestation of true neutrality, would undoubtedly have been the more persuasive appeal. When coupled with a promise to close its own ports if the neutral power found itself at war, and a sorrowful shaking of the head at how dramatically the Union had changed its diplomatic tune in a mere matter of months, it is probable that the British could close almost every neutral port in the world against prizes.

To illustrate the effect of this diplomatic mistake, let us take the two ships supposedly captured by the Vanderbilt in April 1862. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly hard to tell where the two captures were made. The habitual route of the brig Scotia, carrying coals from Cardiff to Penzance, suggests that the Vanderbilt captured her in the Bristol Channel. This is not only out of the way of a ship buying saltpetre from continental Europe, but is an unncessarily risky venture considering the British ships stationed at Queenstown (Cork) and Milford Haven. As for the East Indiaman Northfleet, the fact that it passed Deal on 27 March 1862 and arrived in Hong Kong on 10 July suggests that it should have been well out of the English Channel before the Vanderbilt, departing in April, could have reached that stretch of water. This all resembles the vagueness around the location of the USS Mississippi's final battle, and perhaps reflects TFSmith's broader disdain for 'the realities of time and distance'. Nevertheless, let us assume that both captures were made somewhere in the English Channel.

Wherever in the Channel these ships were taken, there would be no quick 'run into North Sea ports' and a profitable sale. In reality, every neutral port on the near side of the Atlantic would be off limits. Instead, these vessels and their prize crews would have to beat up against the prevailing winds blowing east up the English Channel, past British naval bases in Portsmouth and Plymouth, and out into the Atlantic Ocean. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, they would have to beat the British blockade and sail into a Union port where they could be judged, condemned as lawful prize and sold. All of this, of course, with a ship that had probably been damaged in its capture, and with whatever small crew could be spared from the commerce raider's personnel. Needless to say, this would represent an effort completely disproportionate to the value of the prize.

Capture and condemnation was only one of three possible treatments of enemy ships, however. There was always the possibility of issuing a ransom bond for the value of the ship and allowing it to go on its way. However, these bonds could only be collected after the war was over. As such, ships could be captured and bonded a thousand times in a single voyage without causing the British economy any more inconvenience than the delay to the voyage caused by the master to sign the forms. At the end of the war, the shipowner would have to pay: until then, any loss was merely nominal. The only real alternative, if the commerce raiding was actually to hurt British commerce, would be to burn the ships captured. This was the policy adopted by the Confederates, and it would most likely be the one adopted by the Union.

But consider the effect of this policy for a moment. There would be no prize money for the crew of the commerce raiders: no prospect of making a year's pay in an afternoon. In the best case scenario, the crews would watch ransomed ships sail away with a promise to pay after the war- provided, of course, that the sailors survived to claim their share. In the worst case scenario, the crews would simply watch fortune after fortune burned to the waterline.

All the mercenary advantages, in fact, would be on the side of the British. They would have the world's second-largest merchant fleet to prey on, the world's largest navy to do it with, and a worldwide network of ports into which to bring the prizes. They could prey on everything from whalers in the North Pacific to clipper ships in the straits of the South China Sea to the entire coasting fleet of the Union's eastern seaboard. They could perhaps even ambush Californian gold ships off South America, if the plan of bringing precious metals halfway across a continent in Conestoga wagons proved as foolish in practice as it sounds on paper. Even the lowliest Coastguard ship would have the prospect of catching a cargo of war materials making their way through the Channel or attempting the frigid passage round the Shetlands.

Moreover, in the Royal Navy prize money was paid for the recapture of British prizes if a sufficient time had passed since their initial capture. So let us imagine the scene: a particularly enterprising US commerce raider captures a British clipper in the waters off Madagascar. The clipper's cargo is valued at a quarter of a million pounds, on top of the value of the ship itself. Refusing to simply burn the ship, the captain puts a prize crew abroad and wishes them luck. With exceptional skill and bravery, handling a ship designed for more than thirty sailors with fewer than half that number, the Union prize crew evade the frigates, corvettes and sloops of the Cape of Good Hope station. They bring the ship up the coast of South America, where Rear-Admiral Richard L. Warren's warships lie in wait across the main trade routes. They bypass the British warships plying between the West Indies and Bermuda, and after an epic voyage of almost nine thousand nautical miles are picked up by HMS Rattlesnake, attached to the Delaware Blockading Squadron, during an attempt to break the blockade and enter harbour. The Rattlesnake's 275 men split a quarter of the clipper's value between them, perhaps £400 per man; the captain himself collects a quarter, which would supplements his annual pay of £547 10s by around £60,000. Meanwhile, the Union prize crew faces internment in a fever-ridden Bermudan prison hulk until they can be exchanged for Royal Navy personnel (assuming, of course, that such an agreement can be reached).

Consider this example, and then ask yourself which force 'foreign sailors' seeking 'adventure, prize money, or both' would prefer to serve with. Ask yourself, also, whether talented American sailors would enlist in commerce raiders when they can sign on for a blockade runner, where they would enjoy a greater prospect of monetary reward and less risk of armed engagements with the Royal Navy. These kind of factors are absolutely vital to understanding the course of a potential Trent War. However, TFSmith lacks the intellectual curiosity to even acknowledge their existence. For him, the Union's commerce raiders sweeping the seas clear and bringing Britain to its knees is a matter of historical inevitability, on a par with Manifest Destiny.