Irene Musi-can't (still)

Fair warning: this is another plagiarism post. That means highlighting long sections of text which, in this case, have been copied and pasted from one fictional author to another. It may not be particularly edifying, though I've tried my best to put a decent bit of snark in the comments to liven things up. If you do want to skip this one, there'll be a more interesting piece along any moment. Up to you.


Irene Musicant is the author of Contested Waters: A Naval History of the Anglo-American War, and a serial plagiarist. Why TFSmith decided to make her such a rampant plagiarist is unclear: perhaps he really loves his own descriptions of naval warfare, and wants to make sure you've read them properly. Consider, for instance, the way that a description of the USS Vanderbilt is simply copied and pasted from chapter 15 into chapter 20:

USS Vanderbilt was a 3,400-ton sidewheel steamer, built as a fast liner for Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's North Atlantic Mail Steamship Line and placed into service in 1857. Popularly known as "Vanderbilt's Yacht," the former flagship of the Line had been chartered as [a] transport by the Army and then transferred to the Navy. Capable of 14 knots, the big gray liner had slipped out of New York harbor in January, running across the Atlantic to Europe, where she was loaded with saltpeter purchased by American agents in a half-dozen ports, and then ran back, arriving triumphantly in New York in March after passing the initial line of patrolling British warships at night.

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 saltpeter and slipped off to the northwest, steaming well north into the Norwegian Sea before breaking for the west. Part of the runners’ success was her captain: James C. Luce was a veteran merchant mariner with more than 30 years at sea; in 1854, however, his command, the Collins Line steamer Arctic, had been lost off Cape Race, Newfoundland, after colliding with the 250-ton iron-hulled screw steamer Vesta. Some 400 lives had been lost, including the master’s 11-year-old son; Luce had been held blameless, but he had retired from the sea. When the war broke out, however, Luce had offered his services, and the Navy’s commissioned blockade runners were natural fit [sic], [and/at the same time] Vanderbilt’s commander was both [a man with something to prove and nothing to lose./both utterly relentless and completely capable.]

As you can see, the only significant change made to this section is the description of Luce- presumably TFSmith couldn't decide which one made him sound more of a badass. All Luce needs is a facial scar, a katana and a leather trenchcoat to make him the protagonist of a 90s urban fantasy young adult graphic novel.

Suggesting that Luce was 'completely capable' is rather questionable, given that he had hit a rock off Ireland earlier in 1854, and that the sinking of the Arctic was caused in part by his failure to take proper preparations for fog. In hindsight, we might view his attempt to beach the ship as ill-judged, as it failed to reach land, increased the rate of flooding, and ran over several lifeboats in the process. Similarly, claiming that he 'had been held blameless' when there was never an inquiry into the sinking seems to suggest a more formal absolution than was actually the case.

One can only imagine what would have happened if Luce had been commanding a British merchant ship. Presumably the accident would have been entirely his fault, but the fact would have been covered up by his influential aristocratic friends, and Luce would have rammed three more merchant ships full of British soldiers into various rocks before finally being awarded a peerage.

Not only did Irene plagiarise herself, but later authors also plagiarised Ms Musicant's 1995 work for their own books. For instance, a section from chapter 19 of Contested Waters is put almost wholesale into chapter 6 of the 2003 work 'A Short History of Quebec,' by Jeanne Dickinson and Brigit Young:

[Stringham/The 63-year-old flag officer] found himself in command of what was [grandly titled/designated] the Saint Lawrence Squadron and Montreal Naval Shipyard[. The yard was/,] centered on Augustin Cantin’s Montreal Marine Works, [an integrated yard of 14 acres in extent that/which] had built more than 70 vessels since 1846[, including/These included] river, lake, and coastal steamers of up to 300 tons displacement. Cantin’s yard was supported by the foundries and engine works of the city, and the facilities were rapidly expanded by Stringham’s [equally rapidly/quickly] expanding staff[, led by Commander Stephen Clegg Rowan, an Irish-born professional who had served in the US Navy since 1826. It included] many of the[m the] same men – [notably] Charles K. Graham, Charles B. Stuart, Joseph J. Revere, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Melancthon B. Woolsey – who had thrown together extemporized but useful squadrons on lakes Champlain, Erie, and Ontario during the crisis winter of 1861-62. Nothing that could be built in Montreal could challenge one of the Royal Navy’s corvettes or sloops – much less the 51-gun steam frigate Sutlej, flagship of Rear Admiral John Kingcome’s Saint Lawrence Squadron[, anchored off Quebec] – but the “mosquito fleet” built by Stringham and de Joinville, with the assistance of the Canadiens themselves, could use the islands and [back]channels of the river, along with shore batteries and obstructions, to prevent the British from [making/using] the Saint Lawrence [as] a highway much [above/below] Lake Saint-Pierre. By such, of course, not only was Montreal protected, but all the canals were controlled and the Ottawa River Valley and the Lakes were cut off from British seapower.

For some reason, TFSmith seems to think that the only difference between a description of the naval situation on the St Lawrence from a specialist naval history book and a similar description from a chapter on 'the Patriote revolution' in a book entitled 'A Short History of Quebec' should be that the latter is 17 words shorter.

Ms Musicant's chapter 23 is also plagiarised into chapter 12 of  Aaron Foreman's 2010 'A World Aflame':

[In British Columbia, the governor, Sir James Douglas, was also an appointee;] Douglas, [an appointee without any military experience], had [worked/been] in the Northwest for some 30 years for the Hudson’s Bay Company, rising to chief factor and governor of Vancouver Island and the mainland territories. There was an elected Legislative Assembly, but all executive power was in Douglas’s hands, who administered the mainland colony in absentia from Victoria; the system was derided as a “family-company compact” by more than a few colonists, [of both/both of] British and American ancestry.

Other than the ships of Maitland’s Pacific Squadron – [which were] responsible for protecting British interests from Victoria to Valparaiso – the regular military presence in the colonies was minimal; the British Columbia Detachment [numbered/of] less than 200 Royal Engineers, commanded by Col. Richard Clement Moody, 49, a professional soldier who doubled as both chief commissioner of lands and lieutenant governor of British Columbia. In the event of trouble – whether with the Indians or the Americans - his force could be augmented by 150 Royal Marines from the squadron, the detachment on San Juan Island, and the naval depot at Esquimalt Harbor on Vancouver Island, plus any sailors who could be spared, all under the command of Captain George Bazalgette[, RM]. Douglas could also call out the colony’s few companies of volunteer militia and the police; together, there would be enough to secure the government buildings at Victoria on Vancouver Island and New Westminster on the mainland, but little more.

Not one, but two sections are copied and pasted over:

the Americans could draw on population and economic resources – in California, Oregon, and the Washington and Nevada territories – that outnumbered those of British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and the marginally-administered interior by close to 9-1. In the 1860 census, for example, California’s “settled” population was listed as 380,000; Oregon’s, 52,000; Washington’s, 12,000; and Nevada’s, some 7,000. In contract, the equivalent in the British territories was 51,000, a decrease of almost 10 percent since 1851.

San Francisco’s population alone, some 57,000, was greater than that of the entirety of British Columbia; the largest “British” city in the colonies, Victoria on Vancouver Island, had a population roughly a tenth of the American city. The mainland capital, New Westminster, was even smaller, and industry was so limited that ore mined in British Columbia was smelted in San Francisco. In addition, of the 51,000 “settled” population within the British colonies, a significant percentage were actually American citizens; at least 12,000 were in the colony by 1862, searching for gold in the Fraser River valley or otherwise working, from Victoria to Cowichan. Similar patterns held true in the U.S., of course; of the 130,000 voters in the 1860 election in California, for example, some 50,000 were from northern states, 30,000 from southern states, and another 50,000 were foreign born, mostly Irish, British, and German. The percentages were different in Oregon and the two U.S. territories west of the Rockies, but the patterns were similar.

That being said, despite rumors of secessionist plots and alarmist headlines, in 1860 Lincoln carried California comfortably with 32 percent of the vote; Douglas and Bell voters totaled 40 percent, putting the “loyal” vote at more than 70 percent, while Breckinridge’s “Southern Democrats” only won about 28 percent. Significantly, in January, 1862, California elected its first Republican governor, Leland Stanford, one of the leading businessmen in the state; he joined Oregon’s John Whiteaker, a Democrat elected in 1858, and the appointed territorial governors of Washington, William Pickering, and Nevada, James W. Nye, both Republicans named by the president. All four men supported Washington’s calls for troops; almost 20,000 volunteers, organized into ten regiments and two battalions of infantry, four regiments and a separate battalion of cavalry, were raised on the Pacific Slope. These troops – eight regiments of infantry, three of cavalry, and a separate battalion in California, two regiments (one each of infantry and cavalry) from Oregon, an infantry regiment in Washington, and a battalion each of infantry and cavalry in Nevada – were entirely separate from the part-time state and territorial militias (split between organized and unorganized elements) and the regulars of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Revenue Marine who remained at posts from Puget Sound to San Diego.

If TFSmith was worried that his readers won't remember what has happened previously, he could give multiple extracts from different authors within a single chapter. The problem here is that he lacks the inclination to rephrase anything he's written already. Even if the previous section is clearly unsuitable for the source it's supposed to come from - witness that 'Short History of Quebec' - he would rather copy and paste than produce something new.